Appeals have been made to Augustine authorizing torture based on a perceived affinity with the re... more Appeals have been made to Augustine authorizing torture based on a perceived affinity with the realist tradition of political philosophy and a passage in his City of God (19.6) where a wise judge is said to torture out of grim necessity. Recent scholarship, however, has shown Augustine’s parable of the torturing judge to be no defence of torture, but rather to be an especially noteworthy moment in the larger proptreptic that is the City of God. The torturing judge read in its full context exposes the limits of Stoic philosophy by depicting its inability to supply either happiness or security. Augustine’s other writing show his deep familiarity with torture as it was practiced in his day, his rejection of it, and his consistent appeals to other disciplinary and rhetorical forms of persuasion that he believed were both more effective and more humane. Without retreating from social questions into religious sentimentalities, Augustine resisted torture amid ineradicable insecurity and uncertainty. While other longstanding arguments about Augustine’s politics continue unabated, no appeal can be made to Augustine’s life or thought to authorize torture under any circumstances.
La creciente insatisfacción de los actuales especialistas con los escasos resultados producid... more La creciente insatisfacción de los actuales especialistas con los escasos resultados producidos por el uso de las modernas categorías analíticas para explicar la temprana exégesis cristiana, requiere el desarrollo de análisis alternativos. Los estudios recientes sobre la filosofía antigua indican cómo la práctica de Orígenes de la interpretación bíblica puede entenderse como un aspecto esencial del entrenamiento ascético de la mente. Más que evaluar las conclusiones de Orígenes, nos parece mejor situar sus esfuerzos interpretativos dentro de su estilo general de investigación y comprometernos con él en las prácticas meditativas intelectualmente exigentes que él defendió. Frente a los impedimentos mentales, físicos y políticos que estrechan la mente humana, la actividad exegética de Orígenes era una forma osada de razonar sobre la naturaleza de las cosas. Mediante el uso de palabras e imágenes de la Escritura como un camino material para sus recorridos, Orígenes sostuvo que la mente, a través de la práctica de varias investigaciones, podría ser conducida a lo que de otra manera estaría más allá de su alcance de visión. Por este camino, para Orígenes, la interpretación de la Escritura es atraída al itinerario fundamental de la oración desde la superficie material del mundo a las cuestiones del alma, y eventualmente al Espíritu mismo
A contested line between the public and the private is well attested in Augustine’s writings and ... more A contested line between the public and the private is well attested in Augustine’s writings and runs through every human society and individual human heart. What Augustine calls ‘privacy’ involves a movement where the human heart resists observation, turns away from the shared and given, and toward the individual and owned. Despite the enormous cost of what turns out to be a failed protective strategy and the manner in which it inevitably becomes entwined with ignorance, fear, and sin, Augustine maintained a policy of respecting the secrets of others and articulated a theology in which privacy becomes the very space in which the sinful heart is lured out of its self-containment by divine grace present in the bodily acts of Christ’s followers. Augustine’s highly nuanced and practical position supplies resources for those concerned about the controlling effects of the growing surveillance powers of contemporary state and corporate actors.
The remarkable renaissance of Augustinian studies in the last half-century has led most recently ... more The remarkable renaissance of Augustinian studies in the last half-century has led most recently to extended studies of Augustine’s great many preserved sermons. Several of these studies have discerned itineraries of the heart and mind rhetorically constructed by the preacher intended to be followed by hearers as a regular self-implicating practice. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, I examine one particularly central axis among others in the sermons; namely, Augustine’s widespread attention to the social dynamics of shame and the violence of traditional Roman remedies to redeem shameful experiences ranging from revenge to suicide. Although Augustine, by no means, sets aside sensitivity to shame as an ingredient in all human social relations, he constructs exegetical exercises in a number of sermons that provide nonviolent, alternate means for shame’s redemption where perceived humiliation is transformed into humility. In this way, Augustine addressed everyday violence not only through specific moral admonitions, but also by “re-rooting,” as it were, the Roman self through artfully constructed spiritual exercises. This re-orientation of the self is typical of Augustine where his thinking leads not necessarily from x to y but rather to a new and unforeseen experience of x.
Lee Barrett‘s Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard draws a stro... more Lee Barrett‘s Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard draws a strong contrast between the “Augustine” whom Kierkegaard thought he knew and the Augustine we have come to know through recent scholarship. The dogmatic, speculative, non-rhetorical Augustine whom Kierkegaard rejected has come to be replaced by a rhetorical Augustine whose voice is adapted to a variety of audiences—an Augustine whose theological style is more similar to Kierkegaard than he ever knew. This realization enables Barrett to discover unforeseen intersections between these two Christian intellectuals, but none is more fundamental than their shared commitment to a form of theological rhetoric: one where what is most central is what transpires in the subjective experience of the reader or hearer rather than in the objective status of theological propositions. Barrett's work clears the way for similar assessments of other intellectuals.
The growing dissatisfaction of current scholars with the meagre results produced by the use of mo... more The growing dissatisfaction of current scholars with the meagre results produced by the use of modern analytic categories to explain early Christian exegesis calls for developing alternate analyses. Recent studies in ancient philosophy indicate how Origen’s practice of biblical interpretation can be understood to be an essential aspect of the mind’s ascetical training. Rather than evaluating Origen’s conclusions, we are better off situating his interpretive efforts within his overall style of inquiry and engaging with him in the intellectually demanding meditational practices he advocated. Amid the mental, physical, and political impediments that constrain the human mind, Origen’s exegetical enterprise was a daring form of reasoning about the nature of things. By using the words and images of scripture as a material path for its travels, Origen contended that the mind, through various practiced mental inquiries, could be led to what would otherwise be beyond its scope of vision. In this way, for Origen, scriptural interpretation is drawn into prayer’s fundamental itinerary from the world’s material surface, to matters of the soul, and eventually to the Spirit itself.
Augustine’s Christian psychology is best understood as one particularly brilliant example of the ... more Augustine’s Christian psychology is best understood as one particularly brilliant example of the philosophically informed therapies that were prevalent in the late antique world. Representatives of Greek and Roman philosophical schools commonly employed highly cognitive therapeutic regimes to assist individuals in imposing a rational order upon the instinctual push and pull of their emotions. They did so by artfully constructing words and ascetic practices to help individuals grow in self-knowledge and to act according to their newly acquired insights. To know oneself was to understand oneself within an ordered universe as a rational yet mortal human being rather than as a god or beast. Seeing how Augustine used the psychology that he inherited makes it possible to appreciate, among other things, his pioneering analysis of the internal divisions that fragment the self. Furthermore, it is in his critique of philosophically articulated technologies of self-improvement that Augustine’s worry becomes apparent that such therapies risk entrapping the self in its own rational point of view. For Augustine, psychic health required therapeutic practices that not only supplied self-knowledge, but also progressively freed the self from its own rational constructions as it increasingly found stability in divinely given love.
While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarter... more While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarters on account of its explanatory power, his Christian ideals have had difficulty gaining purchase in the material world. The tension between particular political interests and universal moral ideals threatens not only to undermine Niebuhr's efforts to preserve the ethical quality of politics but also his grounds for hope. The source of this problem can be traced to a weakness in the Christological foundations of Niebuhr's Christian realism—specifically to his intentional severing of classical Christology from politics in his appropriation of Augustine's realism. After examining the reasons for this rejection of classical reflections about Jesus, this article explains how the Christology of Niebuhr's favorite early Christian realist, Augustine, makes possible a theological reasoning that expands the social imagination, and promotes a deeply principled and hopeful material transformation, while not forfeiting its critical and explanatory capacity.
In a world where too many people continue to be tortured without recourse to legal protections, n... more In a world where too many people continue to be tortured without recourse to legal protections, nonlegislative resources for preserving human dignity amid dehumanizing terror are much needed. This article analyzes the hermeneutical exercises constructed by the influential third century Christian intellectual, Origen of Alexandria, to prepare himself and others for torture and martyrdom. These exercises were designed to be a counter-asceticism that would strike at the root of violence both in the self and in society and enable his contemporary Christians to suffer at the hands of the Romans without losing sight either of their own humanity or that of their tormentors. Christians following Origen’s practice were trained to resist not only the Roman Empire’s violent disciplining of bodies, but the whole interpretation of the world that justified it as they embodied a nonviolent alternative to it. In this way, Origen provides resources for a particularly religious mode of resistance to torture that usefully supplements the contemporary human rights campaign and holds promise for overcoming some of its limitations.
The profile of American clergy is rapidly changing, especially when gauged in terms of their incr... more The profile of American clergy is rapidly changing, especially when gauged in terms of their increasing age and the small number of young people who begin ministry in their twenties. This article contends that the problem of recruitment is the result of a destabilization of the profession that has occurred in recent decades and has called into question the value of the clergy’s traditional skills and knowledge. Understanding the real root of the crisis explains the prevalence of ministerial ideals that instruct clergy, above all, to use their profound understanding of their own life experience to make their ministry meaningful to contemporary people. Such an approach has a number of shortcomings, not the least of which is that it has little to say about how those who lack life experience are to be qualified for ministry. Rather than appealing to life experience, it will be more fruitful to focus on the recovery of the clergy’s confidence in the intellectual content of their profession and the intrinsic value of its fundamental practices.
Athanasius’s letter provides evidence of how he drew upon resources available in Hellenistic phil... more Athanasius’s letter provides evidence of how he drew upon resources available in Hellenistic philosophy to integrate the psalms into the sort of meditational practices that were the chief means of caring for oneself taught by the philosophical schools. The Psalter proved to be a remarkably flexible technology that could be appropriated in any number of circumstances to acquire self-knowledge and heal unhealthy emotional and intellectual responses. The self ’s indeterminacy was stabilized through daily exercises that employed the persuasive language of the Psalter to internalize the biblical narrative and its constitutive theological doctrines. The ultimate goal of this spiritual practice of personal prayer was to harmonize oneself with the eternal Source of the universe as one’s bodily song became more and more an outward image of the internal ordering of the mind. Athanasius’s promotion of the Psalter had important political implications insofar as it was an aspect of his broader effort to unite urban and rural Christians in a shared ascetic program.
When the many readers of Aloys Grillmeier’s standard work on the early history of Christian think... more When the many readers of Aloys Grillmeier’s standard work on the early history of Christian thinking about Jesus arrive at the sixth-century theologian Leontius of Byzantium, they are informed, “Until recently there was no attempt to produce a critical edition of the authentic works which were or should be ascribed to one and the same Leontius. This important goal is now close to completion.” (Christ in Christian Tradition, 2 vol. [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995], 181) This reference is to Brian Daley’s 1978 dissertation. In the intervening decades, Daley has made any number of important and lengthy contributions to early Christian studies, but this long-promised critical edition had yet to appear, until now....
Contemporary scholars have produced studies mapping ancient doctrinal debates in ever more detail... more Contemporary scholars have produced studies mapping ancient doctrinal debates in ever more detail, charting the grammatical rules governing the use of theological terms, offering much-needed reassessments of well-known figures, and recovering materials of individuals previously neglected or unknown. What, nevertheless, has become increasingly clear is that Nicene Orthodoxy did not become what it did only because of its coherence and intelligibility. It came to be seen as true through engagement with any number of technologies of persuasion (or psychagogies), each of which deserves lengthy historical study in its own right.
Winner of the North American Patristics Society’s “Best First Book Prize,” Brian P. Dunkle’s monograph takes its place alongside other retrievals of late antique psychagogic arts. Recent years have seen studies of the psychagogy of sermons (primarily Augustine in the Latin West and John Chrysostom in the Greek East) and proven how pivotal rhetorical performance was in the establishment and spread of Christianity as we know it. Dunkle’s important contribution expands such studies to include the composition of highly influential Latin verse hymns that were intentionally inflected by mystagogical and persuasive aims....
The credit Origen has received for being among the first systematicians of the Christian traditio... more The credit Origen has received for being among the first systematicians of the Christian tradition has frequently led scholars to study the inner coherence of Origen’s statements rather than to search for the particular historical occasions that gave rise to them in the first place. Without lessening Origen’s status as an early Christian intellectual, Ronald Heine endeavors to displace every “homogenized view” of Origen’s thought in favor of one that locates his many works in their original contexts (vii ff.). Heine’s rigorous historical commitments have the happy result of preventing concerns about determining Origen’s “orthodoxy” (however defined) from becoming the monograph’s organizing center. Heine navigates around the many centuries of polemics that have dogged this most controversial of Christian thinkers while demonstrating a mastery of the vast sea of fragments of lost works of Origen preserved in the citations of later writers that are frequently the only evidence we have....
Appeals have been made to Augustine authorizing torture based on a perceived affinity with the re... more Appeals have been made to Augustine authorizing torture based on a perceived affinity with the realist tradition of political philosophy and a passage in his City of God (19.6) where a wise judge is said to torture out of grim necessity. Recent scholarship, however, has shown Augustine’s parable of the torturing judge to be no defence of torture, but rather to be an especially noteworthy moment in the larger proptreptic that is the City of God. The torturing judge read in its full context exposes the limits of Stoic philosophy by depicting its inability to supply either happiness or security. Augustine’s other writing show his deep familiarity with torture as it was practiced in his day, his rejection of it, and his consistent appeals to other disciplinary and rhetorical forms of persuasion that he believed were both more effective and more humane. Without retreating from social questions into religious sentimentalities, Augustine resisted torture amid ineradicable insecurity and uncertainty. While other longstanding arguments about Augustine’s politics continue unabated, no appeal can be made to Augustine’s life or thought to authorize torture under any circumstances.
La creciente insatisfacción de los actuales especialistas con los escasos resultados producid... more La creciente insatisfacción de los actuales especialistas con los escasos resultados producidos por el uso de las modernas categorías analíticas para explicar la temprana exégesis cristiana, requiere el desarrollo de análisis alternativos. Los estudios recientes sobre la filosofía antigua indican cómo la práctica de Orígenes de la interpretación bíblica puede entenderse como un aspecto esencial del entrenamiento ascético de la mente. Más que evaluar las conclusiones de Orígenes, nos parece mejor situar sus esfuerzos interpretativos dentro de su estilo general de investigación y comprometernos con él en las prácticas meditativas intelectualmente exigentes que él defendió. Frente a los impedimentos mentales, físicos y políticos que estrechan la mente humana, la actividad exegética de Orígenes era una forma osada de razonar sobre la naturaleza de las cosas. Mediante el uso de palabras e imágenes de la Escritura como un camino material para sus recorridos, Orígenes sostuvo que la mente, a través de la práctica de varias investigaciones, podría ser conducida a lo que de otra manera estaría más allá de su alcance de visión. Por este camino, para Orígenes, la interpretación de la Escritura es atraída al itinerario fundamental de la oración desde la superficie material del mundo a las cuestiones del alma, y eventualmente al Espíritu mismo
A contested line between the public and the private is well attested in Augustine’s writings and ... more A contested line between the public and the private is well attested in Augustine’s writings and runs through every human society and individual human heart. What Augustine calls ‘privacy’ involves a movement where the human heart resists observation, turns away from the shared and given, and toward the individual and owned. Despite the enormous cost of what turns out to be a failed protective strategy and the manner in which it inevitably becomes entwined with ignorance, fear, and sin, Augustine maintained a policy of respecting the secrets of others and articulated a theology in which privacy becomes the very space in which the sinful heart is lured out of its self-containment by divine grace present in the bodily acts of Christ’s followers. Augustine’s highly nuanced and practical position supplies resources for those concerned about the controlling effects of the growing surveillance powers of contemporary state and corporate actors.
The remarkable renaissance of Augustinian studies in the last half-century has led most recently ... more The remarkable renaissance of Augustinian studies in the last half-century has led most recently to extended studies of Augustine’s great many preserved sermons. Several of these studies have discerned itineraries of the heart and mind rhetorically constructed by the preacher intended to be followed by hearers as a regular self-implicating practice. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, I examine one particularly central axis among others in the sermons; namely, Augustine’s widespread attention to the social dynamics of shame and the violence of traditional Roman remedies to redeem shameful experiences ranging from revenge to suicide. Although Augustine, by no means, sets aside sensitivity to shame as an ingredient in all human social relations, he constructs exegetical exercises in a number of sermons that provide nonviolent, alternate means for shame’s redemption where perceived humiliation is transformed into humility. In this way, Augustine addressed everyday violence not only through specific moral admonitions, but also by “re-rooting,” as it were, the Roman self through artfully constructed spiritual exercises. This re-orientation of the self is typical of Augustine where his thinking leads not necessarily from x to y but rather to a new and unforeseen experience of x.
Lee Barrett‘s Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard draws a stro... more Lee Barrett‘s Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard draws a strong contrast between the “Augustine” whom Kierkegaard thought he knew and the Augustine we have come to know through recent scholarship. The dogmatic, speculative, non-rhetorical Augustine whom Kierkegaard rejected has come to be replaced by a rhetorical Augustine whose voice is adapted to a variety of audiences—an Augustine whose theological style is more similar to Kierkegaard than he ever knew. This realization enables Barrett to discover unforeseen intersections between these two Christian intellectuals, but none is more fundamental than their shared commitment to a form of theological rhetoric: one where what is most central is what transpires in the subjective experience of the reader or hearer rather than in the objective status of theological propositions. Barrett's work clears the way for similar assessments of other intellectuals.
The growing dissatisfaction of current scholars with the meagre results produced by the use of mo... more The growing dissatisfaction of current scholars with the meagre results produced by the use of modern analytic categories to explain early Christian exegesis calls for developing alternate analyses. Recent studies in ancient philosophy indicate how Origen’s practice of biblical interpretation can be understood to be an essential aspect of the mind’s ascetical training. Rather than evaluating Origen’s conclusions, we are better off situating his interpretive efforts within his overall style of inquiry and engaging with him in the intellectually demanding meditational practices he advocated. Amid the mental, physical, and political impediments that constrain the human mind, Origen’s exegetical enterprise was a daring form of reasoning about the nature of things. By using the words and images of scripture as a material path for its travels, Origen contended that the mind, through various practiced mental inquiries, could be led to what would otherwise be beyond its scope of vision. In this way, for Origen, scriptural interpretation is drawn into prayer’s fundamental itinerary from the world’s material surface, to matters of the soul, and eventually to the Spirit itself.
Augustine’s Christian psychology is best understood as one particularly brilliant example of the ... more Augustine’s Christian psychology is best understood as one particularly brilliant example of the philosophically informed therapies that were prevalent in the late antique world. Representatives of Greek and Roman philosophical schools commonly employed highly cognitive therapeutic regimes to assist individuals in imposing a rational order upon the instinctual push and pull of their emotions. They did so by artfully constructing words and ascetic practices to help individuals grow in self-knowledge and to act according to their newly acquired insights. To know oneself was to understand oneself within an ordered universe as a rational yet mortal human being rather than as a god or beast. Seeing how Augustine used the psychology that he inherited makes it possible to appreciate, among other things, his pioneering analysis of the internal divisions that fragment the self. Furthermore, it is in his critique of philosophically articulated technologies of self-improvement that Augustine’s worry becomes apparent that such therapies risk entrapping the self in its own rational point of view. For Augustine, psychic health required therapeutic practices that not only supplied self-knowledge, but also progressively freed the self from its own rational constructions as it increasingly found stability in divinely given love.
While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarter... more While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarters on account of its explanatory power, his Christian ideals have had difficulty gaining purchase in the material world. The tension between particular political interests and universal moral ideals threatens not only to undermine Niebuhr's efforts to preserve the ethical quality of politics but also his grounds for hope. The source of this problem can be traced to a weakness in the Christological foundations of Niebuhr's Christian realism—specifically to his intentional severing of classical Christology from politics in his appropriation of Augustine's realism. After examining the reasons for this rejection of classical reflections about Jesus, this article explains how the Christology of Niebuhr's favorite early Christian realist, Augustine, makes possible a theological reasoning that expands the social imagination, and promotes a deeply principled and hopeful material transformation, while not forfeiting its critical and explanatory capacity.
In a world where too many people continue to be tortured without recourse to legal protections, n... more In a world where too many people continue to be tortured without recourse to legal protections, nonlegislative resources for preserving human dignity amid dehumanizing terror are much needed. This article analyzes the hermeneutical exercises constructed by the influential third century Christian intellectual, Origen of Alexandria, to prepare himself and others for torture and martyrdom. These exercises were designed to be a counter-asceticism that would strike at the root of violence both in the self and in society and enable his contemporary Christians to suffer at the hands of the Romans without losing sight either of their own humanity or that of their tormentors. Christians following Origen’s practice were trained to resist not only the Roman Empire’s violent disciplining of bodies, but the whole interpretation of the world that justified it as they embodied a nonviolent alternative to it. In this way, Origen provides resources for a particularly religious mode of resistance to torture that usefully supplements the contemporary human rights campaign and holds promise for overcoming some of its limitations.
The profile of American clergy is rapidly changing, especially when gauged in terms of their incr... more The profile of American clergy is rapidly changing, especially when gauged in terms of their increasing age and the small number of young people who begin ministry in their twenties. This article contends that the problem of recruitment is the result of a destabilization of the profession that has occurred in recent decades and has called into question the value of the clergy’s traditional skills and knowledge. Understanding the real root of the crisis explains the prevalence of ministerial ideals that instruct clergy, above all, to use their profound understanding of their own life experience to make their ministry meaningful to contemporary people. Such an approach has a number of shortcomings, not the least of which is that it has little to say about how those who lack life experience are to be qualified for ministry. Rather than appealing to life experience, it will be more fruitful to focus on the recovery of the clergy’s confidence in the intellectual content of their profession and the intrinsic value of its fundamental practices.
Athanasius’s letter provides evidence of how he drew upon resources available in Hellenistic phil... more Athanasius’s letter provides evidence of how he drew upon resources available in Hellenistic philosophy to integrate the psalms into the sort of meditational practices that were the chief means of caring for oneself taught by the philosophical schools. The Psalter proved to be a remarkably flexible technology that could be appropriated in any number of circumstances to acquire self-knowledge and heal unhealthy emotional and intellectual responses. The self ’s indeterminacy was stabilized through daily exercises that employed the persuasive language of the Psalter to internalize the biblical narrative and its constitutive theological doctrines. The ultimate goal of this spiritual practice of personal prayer was to harmonize oneself with the eternal Source of the universe as one’s bodily song became more and more an outward image of the internal ordering of the mind. Athanasius’s promotion of the Psalter had important political implications insofar as it was an aspect of his broader effort to unite urban and rural Christians in a shared ascetic program.
When the many readers of Aloys Grillmeier’s standard work on the early history of Christian think... more When the many readers of Aloys Grillmeier’s standard work on the early history of Christian thinking about Jesus arrive at the sixth-century theologian Leontius of Byzantium, they are informed, “Until recently there was no attempt to produce a critical edition of the authentic works which were or should be ascribed to one and the same Leontius. This important goal is now close to completion.” (Christ in Christian Tradition, 2 vol. [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1995], 181) This reference is to Brian Daley’s 1978 dissertation. In the intervening decades, Daley has made any number of important and lengthy contributions to early Christian studies, but this long-promised critical edition had yet to appear, until now....
Contemporary scholars have produced studies mapping ancient doctrinal debates in ever more detail... more Contemporary scholars have produced studies mapping ancient doctrinal debates in ever more detail, charting the grammatical rules governing the use of theological terms, offering much-needed reassessments of well-known figures, and recovering materials of individuals previously neglected or unknown. What, nevertheless, has become increasingly clear is that Nicene Orthodoxy did not become what it did only because of its coherence and intelligibility. It came to be seen as true through engagement with any number of technologies of persuasion (or psychagogies), each of which deserves lengthy historical study in its own right.
Winner of the North American Patristics Society’s “Best First Book Prize,” Brian P. Dunkle’s monograph takes its place alongside other retrievals of late antique psychagogic arts. Recent years have seen studies of the psychagogy of sermons (primarily Augustine in the Latin West and John Chrysostom in the Greek East) and proven how pivotal rhetorical performance was in the establishment and spread of Christianity as we know it. Dunkle’s important contribution expands such studies to include the composition of highly influential Latin verse hymns that were intentionally inflected by mystagogical and persuasive aims....
The credit Origen has received for being among the first systematicians of the Christian traditio... more The credit Origen has received for being among the first systematicians of the Christian tradition has frequently led scholars to study the inner coherence of Origen’s statements rather than to search for the particular historical occasions that gave rise to them in the first place. Without lessening Origen’s status as an early Christian intellectual, Ronald Heine endeavors to displace every “homogenized view” of Origen’s thought in favor of one that locates his many works in their original contexts (vii ff.). Heine’s rigorous historical commitments have the happy result of preventing concerns about determining Origen’s “orthodoxy” (however defined) from becoming the monograph’s organizing center. Heine navigates around the many centuries of polemics that have dogged this most controversial of Christian thinkers while demonstrating a mastery of the vast sea of fragments of lost works of Origen preserved in the citations of later writers that are frequently the only evidence we have....
Uploads
Books by Paul Kolbet
Papers by Paul Kolbet
Book Reviews by Paul Kolbet
Winner of the North American Patristics Society’s “Best First Book Prize,” Brian P. Dunkle’s monograph takes its place alongside other retrievals of late antique psychagogic arts. Recent years have seen studies of the psychagogy of sermons (primarily Augustine in the Latin West and John Chrysostom in the Greek East) and proven how pivotal rhetorical performance was in the establishment and spread of Christianity as we know it. Dunkle’s important contribution expands such studies to include the composition of highly influential Latin verse hymns that were intentionally inflected by mystagogical and persuasive aims....
Winner of the North American Patristics Society’s “Best First Book Prize,” Brian P. Dunkle’s monograph takes its place alongside other retrievals of late antique psychagogic arts. Recent years have seen studies of the psychagogy of sermons (primarily Augustine in the Latin West and John Chrysostom in the Greek East) and proven how pivotal rhetorical performance was in the establishment and spread of Christianity as we know it. Dunkle’s important contribution expands such studies to include the composition of highly influential Latin verse hymns that were intentionally inflected by mystagogical and persuasive aims....