Christian Authors Research Articles

Leisure and the Muses in Sidonius Apollinaris

Leisure and the Muses in Sidonius Apollinaris Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer and Judith Hindermann The works of Sidonius Apollinaris long have been the subject of interest in historical and theological studies, for he documents the life of the Gallo-Roman elite in a time of social and political upheaval.1 However, his role as a Latin-writing author of poems and letters, who follows and transforms the Roman literary tradition, has only recently been appreciated. The aim of the conference "Muse und Muße bei Sidonius Apollinaris,"2 which was held 12–13 January 2018 at the University of Basel, Switzerland, thus was to focus on the "literary" Sidonius. Revised versions of eight of the papers presented at the conference are collected in this special issue. In the following pages we introduce the issue's theme and then offer an overview of its individual contributions. The two terms Muße (leisure) and Muse (Muse), near homonyms in German, open up a field of interpretation that covers the themes of inspiration, production, and reception of literature in Late Antiquity. In Sidonius's letters and poems, leisure and the Muses are closely connected; each promotes the other, manifesting themselves as part of the Greco-Roman and Christian traditions. Writing in Gaul in a time of political tensions, Sidonius faced the question of whether he needed undisturbed leisure to write his poems, encomia and letters like his predecessors and what role the Muses would play in his various writings of different literary genres. In his time otium was a privilege of the elite, who represented themselves as being unaffected by prevailing uncertainty and instability while they enjoyed an undisturbed otium in the [End Page 2] timeless setting of their suburban estates.3 Using literary motifs and narratives appears to be a way of reassurance of Sidonius's values and his self-portrayal as a poet.4 The Muse(s) thereby play an important role for him as they symbolize creativity and at the same time the long literary tradition to which he was committed. After the beginning of Greek literature in the eighth-seventh centuries bce,5 the Muses were still being invoked in late antique literature more than a thousand years later. Although Christian authors such as Pauli-nus of Nola, Lactantius, Augustine and Boethius rejected the Muses as deities and replaced them with other instances of inspiration, the Muses continued to exist as synonyms for poetry and often were integrated into Christian contexts by allegorization.6 In his letters and poems Sidonius invokes the Muse(s) many times in various ways, jesting, asking them for help, and even rejecting them. In one letter his patron Caecina Basilius7 casually (heia!) asks Sidonius to show his old muse again by composing a panegyric for Anthemius, who is about to start his second consulate: "Hey, Sidonius, my dear friend … I want you to reveal (exseras) your old Muse to indulge a new consul."8 The verb exserere, which not only means "to get out," "to show," and "to let hear," but also "to undress," forms a double entendre in relation to a Muse as a female figure.9 This fits the subsequent image of the poem as a play (hoc ludo), which, according to the patron, could also be helpful in serious matters. With the vetus Musa Basilius alludes in particular to Sidonius's previous poetic compositions, including imperial panegyrics for Avitus and Majorian which Sidonius delivered in the years 456 and 458.10 Sidonius responds to Basilius's request and composes another panegyricus (Carmen 2) for which he subsequently was rewarded with the office of praefectus urbi. In Carmen 12 though Sidonius lets his Musa iocata, his "joking muse" (lines 20–21), remain silent in the face of the invasion of Lyon by the Burgundians, and instead of a cheerful epithalamium he laments satirically about barbarians who smell of butter and garlic. The Muse here is not only an inspiring divine figure, but also Sidonius's energetic ally in the fight against illiteracy and barbarism. [End Page 3] At the beginning of his poem addressed to bishop Faustus (Carm. 16.1–6), however, the author turns away from Apollo and the Muses and...

Особливості трактування ідеї свободи в релігійно-конфесійній літературі

The article attempts to consider the process of formation and evolution of views on the idea of freedom in christian religious and confessional literature. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of this value in the early stages of Christianity. The article emphasizes the importance of the Bible in formulating and justifying the specifics of the presence of freedom in people’s lives, values and evolutions of basic propositions regarding the role and place of this concept in the history of christianity. The main approaches to the interpretation of freedom in the Old and New Testaments are highlighted. The article reveals the peculiarities of understanding this formation by a number of prominent representatives of medieval and modern thought. The subject of the study in the article is the idea of freedom in the context of Christian theological thought. The material for the author’s understanding was the most important, significant religious texts, which formulate key provisions of the Christian understanding of the idea of freedom. The analysis of the works of Christian thinkers suggests that each of them made more or less significant attempts to understand the place and role of the idea of freedom in Christian creed and human life. At the same time, the very idea of freedom does not appear in them as a separate subject of cognitive search, but as an aspect, part, side of a complex set of issues and problems of the functioning of religion and the church. It is justified that: The fathers of the Church and the first Christian authors were actually engaged in the actualization of the idea of freedom in the Christian creed, adapting it to the Christian world understanding. For example, Bible scholars focused on the Bible’s understanding of freedom, which in one way or another manifests itself in the Bible in various places, but requires coordination with the given directions of Bible studies. Theologians understood the idea of freedom and formulated it depending on the doctrinal beliefs that they adhered to. Religious philosophers made attempts to expand their own version of understanding the idea of freedom, adding to the Christian understanding of it one or another segment of meanings, important, in their opinion, overlooked by traditional doctrines. With the strengthening of the status of Christianity, more and more works appeared in the world that are devoted to special studies of the idea of freedom. Philosophers of various eras and schools were engaged in understanding the idea of freedom and its actualization depending on their own ideas and the needs of the era.

Christians in Caesar’s Household: The Emperors’ Slaves in the Makings of Christianity by Michael Flexsenhar III

Reviewed by: Christians in Caesar’s Household: The Emperors’ Slaves in the Makings of Christianity by Michael Flexsenhar III Rose MacLean Michael Flexsenhar III Christians in Caesar’s Household: The Emperors’ Slaves in the Makings of Christianity University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019 Pp. xvi + 191. $89.95. In this insightful and ambitious first monograph, Michael Flexsenhar III reevaluates the idea that Christianity succeeded in part because it was embraced by enslaved and freed members of the imperial household at Rome. Through revisionist analyses of both literary and material sources, Flexsenhar argues that, beginning in the second century c.e., Christians invented what he calls the “pioneer narrative” (passim) to center their collective past in imperial geography and to define the boundaries of their communities. The argument hinges on Paul’s extension of greetings to the Philippians from “all the saints, especially those from Caesar’s household” (πάντες οἱ ἅγιοι, μάλιστα δὲ οἱ ἐκ τῆς Καίσαρος οἰκίας, Phil 4.22). Although the details cannot be recovered, Flexsenhar makes a reasonable case for understanding these “saints” as low- to mid-level personnel in the administration at Ephesus (Chapter One). Their connections to Philippi would have been grounded in familial or economic networks, not simply shared cult, and Phil 4.22 cannot be taken as evidence that Paul introduced Christianity to the inner circles of the imperial court. Instead, Flexsenhar argues, the identification of these “saints” with members of the emperor’s household at Rome stems from later attempts to locate the martyrdom of Paul (as well as that of Peter) in the capital (Chapter Two). Most strikingly, the tale of Nero’s cupbearer Patroclus in the Martyrdom of Paul harnesses the symbolic power of the familia Caesaris to establish Christianity in Rome’s urban landscape. This tradition forms the backbone of the triumphalist narrative that the book works to dismantle. Flexsenhar pursues this line of inquiry through well-paired readings of Hippolytus’s Refutation of All Heresies, book 9, and Tertullian’s To Scapula (Chapter Three). His thesis that Christian authors used members of the familia Caesaris as rhetorical instruments is highly plausible, especially in the context of imperial literature. On the other hand, the verbal echoes presented between Hippolytus and Lucian are largely generic, and the precise function of the enslaved characters within each text is not always perfectly clear. Moving to the Acts of Justin and Companions, Flexsenhar methodically interprets the figure of Euelpistus [End Page 340] in recensions B and C as a response to the traumas of the latter third century (Chapter Four). More specifically, the editor(s) of recension B recast Euelpistus on the model of Patroclus to articulate a form of Christian piety based on exclusive devotion to Christ. This strategy is effective because Euelpistus’s refusal to venerate Caesar defies the prescriptions of Roman slavery, including those propagated in the household codes, as Flexsenhar notes (82). In the final portion of the book, Flexsenhar examines how inscriptions and archaeological finds have been martialed by scholars to confirm the presence of Christians in the familia Caesaris. His thoughtful, if primarily deconstructive, analysis of the tomb of M. Aurelius Prosenes emphasizes well-known pitfalls in identifying Christians in the epigraphic record prior to the fourth century (Chapter Five). He then sifts through a handful of epitaphs that attest servi Caesaris and liberti Augusti in catacombs, a phenomenon which he attributes more to spoliation than to the supposed popularity of Christianity among imperial staff (Chapter Six). In a case study of the epitaph of Atimetus, an imperial verna (slave born within the household), Flexsenhar makes the intriguing suggestion that cult activity for Peter and Paul in the late third century may have prompted the reframing of this stone as a Christian artefact. This would offer a parallel in material culture to the processes that are evident in the textual sources. In the course of upending the “pioneer narrative,” Flexsenhar ascribes only a limited role to Paul’s associates “from Caesar’s household” at Ephesus, as well as to other members of the familia Caesaris who did adopt Christianity. What he offers instead is an exposition of how Christian thinkers, much like their non-Christian counterparts, exploited a prominent group of enslaved and freed people...

Numénius et la tradition judéo-hellénistique : une relecture du fragment 21 F (13 dP)

Numenius, a Platonic and Pythagorean philosopher of the 1st century, shows himself to be undeniably familiar with the Judeo-Hellenistic tradition. As proof, it is usual to refer to the fragment 21 F (fr. 13 dP) of his dialogue “De Bono.” In this text, it seems that he may have used the same formula as in the Bible, in the Septuagint translation (Ex 3:14a), with which God introduces himself to Moses: ὁ ὤν. Numenius thus apparently designated his first God as the “being par excellence” (τὸ ὄν, τὸ αὐτοόν), just as the Judeo-Hellenistic tradition does, and more specifically Philo of Alexandria, who called God “He who is.” However, the biblical meaning is not present in the sentence from which this formula is taken. This paper argues this point by analyzing the fragment and bringing out the true originality of Numenius which consists in rewriting Timæus (41 c - 42 a; 90 a) and more specifically the Platonic figure of the demiurge. It then appears that the parallel with Philo also cannot be drawn from the function that Numenius attributes in this fragment to his second God, to whom he entrusts the proper function of demiurge. If a connection between the two philosophers is possible, it is to be found above all in their shared appropriation of Plato. Numenius could indeed have encountered Philo and counted him among those Jews who, according to him, shared the master’s teaching (cf. 10 F = fr. 1 dP). Such a reasoning would nevertheless imply that Numenius sometimes summoned him in order to illustrate the correctness of his own interpretations. However, the Christian authors who quote him do not give any direct proof of this, and even if this does not exclude the possibility of an occasional inspiration, in the present state of my research, which will have to be continued, there is no evidence of it, at least not in the fragment 21 F.

Sin: A Thomistic Psychology by Steven J. Jensen

Reviewed by: Sin: A Thomistic Psychology by Steven J. Jensen Romanus Cessario O.P. Sin: A Thomistic Psychology. By Steven J. Jensen. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018. Pp. 336. $34.95 (soft). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3033-7. The Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston enjoys prominence among faculties devoted to the study of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Since 1975 a succession of recognized authorities in the field of Thomist studies has taught there. Steven Jensen, who currently serves as Director for the Center and also holds the Bishop Nold Chair in Graduate Philosophy, continues a work that began under the directorship of Professor Anton C. Pegis, formerly president of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at Toronto. The Center places Houston on the map of Thomist centers throughout the world, alongside Toulouse, Rome, and Fribourg—to name only a few. The present volume witnesses to the quality of the scholarship that one has come to associate with Texas Thomism. Distinguer pour unir recalls an important work of the Thomist author Jacques Maritain, who visited the Houston Center and is numbered among its honorary members. Distinguish to unite captures the overall achievement of Jensen’s presentation of what he calls a Thomistic psychology. In other words, the author demonstrates the remarkable ability of a good thinker to expose the arguments of those colleagues who purport to interpret the same texts that he does. In this case, the texts under analysis come from the pen of the Angelic Doctor, especially the Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae and the disputed questions De malo. Both works date from roughly the same period of Aquinas’s teaching career (the late 1260s and early 1270s). It is a fair generalization to state that the way Aquinas understands the specifically human workings of the rational animal differs from how many theorists of our period explain human behavior. To claim, as Aquinas does, that “a good understood [bonum intellectum] is the will’s object and moves it by being something to aim for” (STh I, q. 82, a. 4) separates Thomists from those who hold that human actions arise from anything but an understood good. To further claim “that in all of our choices we always act for some good” (1) introduces a number of questions that the author treats in chapter 1 under the heading of “The Enigma of an Evil Will.” Facile replies to questions about the relationship of the will to the highest good leads to assertions that would easily fit in the mouth of someone like Goethe’s Mephistopheles. The authentic Christian tradition, however, will not allow evil to determine anything. Had Adam not sinned, Jensen would not have had to write this book. However, original sin entered the world. Christian thinkers, then, face the challenge of explaining the existence of disorder in a world that God created good. I believe that the author chose the title that he did, Sin, in order to make this point. One, therefore, may be forgiven for thinking that a book about Aquinas’s discussion of human willing would most fittingly carry the title [End Page 318] “Blessedness,” whereas casuist authors might hawk their wares by promising cogent thought about sins. The present author, however, cleverly draws us to his subject by his implicit appeal to that which no Christian can escape. Once Christ dies on Calvary, those who follow him must seek to promote the good and to restrain what is evil. Aquinas in fact makes this point explicitly at the start of the Tertia pars. Some have even argued that the whole of the Summa exposes the path persons must follow to become what God made the human creature to be. Jensen outlines the mistakes that thinkers have made about how one should walk along this path. We need to know these errors, even though it remains the case that the only real remedy for the mistakes humans make provides work for theologians and not philosophers. Chapter 2 introduces the various ways in which contemporary philosophers interpret Aquinas’s teleology. The word “teleology” does not appear in the Index. Jensen discusses the ways...

СОВЕСТЬ КАК ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТ: РУССКИЙ ПОДТЕКСТ РАССКАЗА ДЖОНА ГОЛСУОРСИ «CONSCIENCE»

John Galsworthy, as it is quite widely known, was strongly influenced by Russian literature. What is much less known, or even realized, is that this influence had at least two major lines: (1) a literary line, connected with a vivid perception of style, plot, other aesthetic and ideological discoveries of Russian novelists, and (2) a cultural line that carried Galsworthy to philosophizing on such problems as national character, national culture, and the historical development of the European civilization. In this second respect, Chekhov can be considered the central figure for the English writer. This supposition is based on some Galsworthy’s essays in which Chekhov’s name is directly connected with the idea of “Russianness”, with such typical, according to the English writer’s point of view, Russian traits as “a passionate search for truth”, emotionality, self-knowledge, and self-declaration. Thus, these were, primarily, Chekhov’s works that served for Galsworthy as the basis for his very special—both aesthetic and ideological—experiment. Galsworthy conducted this experiment in his short story under a “Russian”, if not “Chekhovian”, title “Conscience” (cf., Chekhov’s short story “Bezzakonie” [Iniquity, Lawlessness]). Conscience is a very significant motif in Chekhov’s works, and it obviously plays an important role in works by many other Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, which is not something inexplicable. Unlike English culture, which, during the 17th–19th centuries, shifted from reliance on the inner moral voice in a human being to faith in outer moral rules, Russian culture, on the eve of the 20th century, still preserved the authentic Christian belief that conscience is the voice of truth in man. Since, in his essays, Galsworthy declared Chekhov the most authentic Russian writer of all he had known, it is natural to assume that whenever we speak about the English writer’s experiment dealing with the Russian concept, we should bear in mind Chekhov (as the key point to understand the experiment). The essence of the experiment can be described in terms of transplanting the Russian model of “life according to the voice of conscience” to the everyday English reality contemporary with the author within the aesthetic texture of his short story. As a result, the hero, who starts—rather unexpectedly both for himself and everybody around him— living according to his conscience, loses his social status, money, job, home, as well as trust of all those who know him. He excludes himself (and is excluded) from social life and from all possible connections with the human world: the only “world”, the only environment open for him is nature. The experiment Galsworthy made in his short story “Conscience” proves that the Russian model of “life according to the voice of conscience” is not viable in the circumstances of English reality (contemporary with the author).

Christianizing Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era by Paul McKechnie

Reviewed by: Christianizing Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era by Paul McKechnie Ulrich Huttner Paul McKechnie Christianizing Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 Pp. 332. $99.99. More and more studies explore the processes of Christianization in Asia Minor, and we are grateful to Paul McKechnie for having set an important milestone in this field. It is not the first time that the author has contributed to the discussion, as his survey about Christian city councilors is well-known (Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 5 [2009]: 1–20). The title of his new book may be a little misleading as it does not treat all of Asia Minor, but focuses only a [End Page 341] small part, Phrygia and its “mixed urban-rural communities” (16). Explaining the religious developments, McKechnie refers to an idea drafted by P. L. Berger: the shift of the “sacred canopy” spread out over the territories controlled by the Romans (88, 196, 246). Chapter One focuses on Colossae: the Pauline Epistle to the Colossians is one of the central sources, and a pivotal question regards the kind of philosophy the author assails. There is every reason to suppose the Epistle was reacting to a complex texture of Greek, Phrygian, and Jewish traditions. In connection with this discussion, McKechnie provides a consistent sketch of the development of Jewish communities in Phrygia, underpinned by some instructive considerations of Talmudic evidence. As always he is very cautious about dividing the different religious identities too sharply: sometimes it is impossible to distinguish Jewish from Christian epitaphs. Chapter Two (“Hierapolis”) takes a look at one of the best-known towns in Phrygia. Here, McKechnie draws the line of Christian authority from Philippus, who came together with his daughters from Palestine to the Lycus Valley, further on to Papias and Apollinarius in the time of Marcus Aurelius. He makes some persuasive points in his reconstruction of a network of bishops in the province of Asia, but it remains doubtful whether they really belonged to the same kinship group (Eusebius, H.E. 5.24.6: συγγενεῖς) or were based in Hierapolis (59–61). Chapter Three, “Teachers of Asia: Ignatius, Polycarp, Paul and Thecla,” turns to Iconium and Pisidian Antioch as important scenes of action. The Acts of Paul and Thecla are rooted in inner Anatolia, and McKechnie is right to emphasize the author’s local knowledge. Polycarp’s Smyrnaean martyrdom and Ignatius’s epistles on the other hand rather illuminate the coastal zones of Asia Minor. Chapters Four and Five trace the development of Montanism: neither the biography of its founder is clear, nor the details of topography and chronology. Montanus came from the prophetical tradition one could observe among the earliest Christians. Integrating the first Christian epitaphs from Temenothyrae into Montanist evidence (132–38) may not convince everyone: the “presbytera” mentioned on one of them could even have belonged to a Christian movement opposing to the Montanists (S. Mitchell in P. Thonemann, ed., Roman Phrygia [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013], 168–97; challenged by McKechnie,144–46). Chapters Six and Seven examine the testimonies about Aberkios, bishop of Phrygian Hieropolis under Marcus Aurelius. McKechnie’s remarks on his famous epitaph and the biblical echoes found in this text are highly illuminating. The opinion that Aberkios is to be identified with Avercius Marcellus, mentioned as anti-Montanist by Eusebius (H.E. 5.16.3), may be contested, but McKechnie is certainly right in explaining parts of the inscription in terms of its Montanist background (158–60). As always with hagiography, the historical evaluation of the Vita Abercii poses a lot of problems. It is significant that McKechnie submits the first English translation of this interesting text (263–87). There are a lot of details in the Vita explained by McKechnie in an excellent way, but taking the Acta Petri and their alleged influence on the Vita Abercii as a base for dating the latter (169–70) seems unconvincing. [End Page 342] Chapter Eight is about Apollonia in the Phrygo-Pisidian borderlands. McKechnie pinpoints one of the leading families during the time of Augustus, and he can...

Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler

Reviewed by: Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity by Maria E. Doerfler Oana Maria Cojocaru Maria E. Doerfler Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity Oakland, CA: California University Press, 2020 Pp. 416. $ 29.95. The book focuses on how late antique people responded to the challenging issue of childhood mortality which was part and parcel of the everyday life of Christian communities. Parents who asked themselves why their children suffered and died so young or how they were to cope with this tragic event may have found their answers in liturgical narratives composed by various Christian authors of the fourth to the sixth centuries, in both the Latin West and the Greek and Syriac East. The overarching argument of Doerfler is that these narratives, crafted around a few well-known biblical characters who experienced tragic losses themselves, were intended to provide psychological, moral, and theological support to bereaved parents. After outlining in the Introduction the scope and structure of her study, in Chapter One Doerfler situates children’s deaths in their socio-historical and ritual contexts by discussing the burial practices and commemoration of departed children. Mindful of the meagerness of archaeological data concerning children’s funerary practices, the author skillfully combines material and textual evidence that give some insight into a range of practices surrounding the death, burial, and commemoration of children, which vary according to the geographical location, financial means, and family preferences. Chapter Two focuses on the liturgical narratives inspired by Genesis 4, which records the killing of Abel by Cain, an occasion for exegetes to portray Eve and Adam as epitomes of parental bereavement, and to teach their audience how to grieve their own dead children. Eve is featured as particularly shaken by Cain’s fratricide: she has not only lost Abel, but also Cain who was punished to wander the world. Doerfler argues that Eve’s suffering envisioned especially by the Syriac writers acted as a mirror through which bereaved parents could internalize their [End Page 665] experience of losing their dear children. One consolation for their loss was the idea preached in the patristic literature, according to which, the departed children would enjoy their afterlife in paradise. Chapter Three deals with the Akedah (Genesis 22)—another biblical story that inspired Christian exegetes to explore the theme of childhood mortality within the context of parental submission to the divine will and the sacrifice of children to God. Abraham’s composure when fulfilling the divine command to kill his own son provided the opportunity for late antique writers to envision various scenarios of what Sarah might have said or done when finding about her husband’s intention to sacrifice Isaac. She becomes “a compensatory figure” (96), “a vital voice for parental grief, lament, and recrimination in aspects of the late ancient exegetical tradition” (99). Chapter Four deals with the intertextual connection of the Akedah with two other biblical narratives that present parents sacrificing their children: Jephthah’s killing of his only daughter (Judges 11), and the mother of the Maccabean martyrs (2 Maccabees 7). In stark contrast with Abraham, whose stoic attitude and readiness to fulfill God’s command to kill his own child was praised by various homilists and commentators, Jephthah aroused heavy criticism for his emotional display at the prospect of killing his own daughter. Against this adverse view of Jephthah’s manifestation of grief, Jacob of Serugh saw him as “a model of balancing grief with duty” (116), “a fundamental human—but not, for that reason, a less admirable—response to moral conflict and especially bereavement” (117). If Jephthah’s character diverges from the masculine ideal of how grief should be expressed, the Maccabean mother, who completes the triad of biblical parents who sacrificed their children, represents the manly woman who displays resilience in the face of her sons’ deaths, a role model for family relationships and spiritual formation of children, as well as “an exemplar of both old and ‘new’ motherhood, of triumphant stoicism, and deep parental attachment and suffering” (142). Chapter Five examines how the story of Job was deployed by homilists and commentators for different strategic...

In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller

Reviewed by: In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller Robin Darling Young In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity. By Patricia Cox Miller. [Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2018. Pp. viii, 271. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-812-5035-0.) A conundrum both lies at the heart of, and drives the analyses in, this book. The author identifies that conundrum in the preface: "while there is no doubt that ancient Christian theology was aligned with Western philosophy's ratification of the boundary between human and animal and the positioning of the human as superior to the animal, there is also the curious fact that, again and again, ancient Christian texts think both about and with animals, especially in terms of their emotional, ethical, psychological and behavioral continuities with human beings." Readers of early Christian theology know that most of its pages reflect the rhetorically-driven controversies reflecting philosophical problems that quickly rocketed from the problematic to the destructively divisive: how could one and three be configured as the same (Trinity); a divine-human metamorphosis achieve stable distribution (Christology); or a vast, differentiated and self-contradictory book be corralled into a repository of stable and self-consistent meaning (biblical [End Page 139] exegesis) suitable for preaching or rational reflection? The mixed success of the third project would always compromise the success of the first two, because they required consistent testimony not to be found in the Bible. On the other hand, there were theological discourses in early Christianity that allowed both for variety and extravagant self-contradiction—for instance, the elaboration of the afterlife, the related question of angelic or demonic populations, or the unregulated production and expression of the cult of the saints. Thinking about animals belongs in this second category. Early Christians appropriated the library of Greek and Latin works about the lives and significance of animals, and they had many scriptural passages that allowed for symbolic or literal interpretation. In addition, they had their own experience of living with all kinds of animals in much closer quarters than their modern interpreters. They remained curious about the creatures with whom human beings shared the world; sometimes, as in the case of ascetic practitioners, they were said to have returned to Edenic harmony with those creatures. This book explores, in five chapters, early Christian curiosity, investigation, and metaphorical interpretation of animals. The first chapter introduces the book by discussing "figuration," and how birds figure as metaphors of human states. The second, on zoomorphism, explores "anthropocentrism and its discontents." The early Christian concentration on the human being and its woes led them often to make invidious comparisons between humans and animals, projecting onto animals the worst qualities of the human. The third chapter, "anthropomorphism," shows how early Christian authors drew animals close, to become the measure of human goodness or its opposite. The fourth and fifth study, respectively, the way in which animals become companions for ascetics, at least in the imagination of their chroniclers; and insects, worms, flies, and other tiny animals feature in the reflections of early Christian authors. No summary of this book's rich chapters can do justice to the complex and polyphonic reflections on the human-animal divide that the author elegantly has assembled for this book. Not only has she explored the perplexity of ancient Christian writers in the face of the host of animals with whom they shared the world. It would be enough to have decentered the topics in which their works more typically feature. But Professor Cox Miller has gone far beyond that; she has put ancient authors in a dialogue with modern authors, also perplexed at their interactions with animals. Because each perspective is not only similar (human) but different—in the wake of eighteenth-century legislation against cruelty to animals—ancient and modern authors illumine each other's reflections. They do not cease to share, however, a wonder at how they, human beings, look "in the eye of the animal" that uncannily looks back. [End Page 140] Robin Darling Young The Catholic University of America Copyright © 2020 The Catholic University of America Press...

Rational theology: The case of Philo of Alexandria

The phenomenon of rational theology arises at the moment when there is a need to adapt traditional or new religious ideas to contemporary and characteristic intellectual practices. The case of Philo of Alexandria can serve as a good example of what happens when two different cultural traditions begin the mutual translation of discourses. We analyze how this affects the most important theological concepts of Philo on the basis of the treatise De opificio mundi. We pay attention to three points: 1. Philo’s assessment of the cosmogonic and historical narrative of Moses as a metaphysical prologue to his legislation; 2. Philo’s interpretation of natural law and natural being as an allegory of metaphysical and moral law; 3. Aristotle’s “motives” in Philo’s description of the activities of God the Creator. It can be concluded that Philo interprets the Greek philosophical language as a completely acceptable way of reading both the laws of nature and the Jewish Scriptures (he explains this through the “borrowing hypothesis”). As a result, the legislation of Moses appears to be included in the structure of the ancient universe reformed by Philo. Greek philosophical discourse is interpreted as one of the manifestations of Divine Revelation— a point of view that will later be inherent in some early Christian authors (for example, Clement of Alexandria).

The Experience of Abandonment by God in Syriac Christian Ascetical Theology

The Experience of Abandonment by God in Syriac Christian Ascetical Theology Elizabeth Anderson (bio) In his classic work The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky criticizes Western ascetical theology for its teachings on the Christian experience of feeling abandoned by God. Targeting Western writers on the spiritual life such as John of the Cross, Lossky insists that feelings of abandonment by God are “never thought of by the mystical and ascetical writers of the Eastern tradition as a necessary or normal stage” of the spiritual life, and he alleges that this teaching is the result of “generally distorted dogmatic vision” in the Christian West, particularly an erroneous Christian theological anthropology.1 Yet despite Lossky’s polemic, there is also a significant strain of spirituality in the Christian East that speaks of the experience of abandonment by God. Indeed, some Eastern Christian writers take this theme much further than John of the Cross, insisting that this is not merely a subjective experience, but rather that the indwelling Holy Spirit truly departs from the Christian at certain times during one’s spiritual life, and that this abandonment is a normal part of spiritual growth. The recovery of such writings could therefore play an important role in the spiritual direction of Christians, especially those from Eastern Christian churches. It can be important for Christians who feel that they have been abandoned by God to know that this experience is normal, and that it is far from being an aberrant development of the early modern West, having been attested to by writers in a diversity of Christian traditions from very early in Christian history. The different interpretations of this experience that are articulated by various Eastern Christian authors can also be a resource for Western Christians who are searching for a greater diversity of understandings about what this experience is, why it happens, and what the appropriate response to it should be. This essay will explore the theme of abandonment by God as it was discussed by several Eastern Christian writers of late antiquity. While the primary focus will be on writers from the traditions of East and West Syriac Christianity, given the interrelationship of Greek and Syriac Christianity in late antiquity, those Greek writers who seem to have influenced the development of Syriac thought will also be considered. These authors give different accounts [End Page 79] of this experience, and many of them also emphasize that there are several different kinds of abandonment by God that Christians may experience. It is therefore important for those who find themselves in such a situation to discern which kind of divine abandonment is being experienced, and thus what the appropriate response to it should be. Very often in contemporary Western Christianity, the phrase “dark night of the soul” is tossed around uncritically to cover any and all experiences of spiritual dryness, depression, emptiness, or despair, stretching the term far beyond what John of the Cross ever intended it to encompass. In addition, therefore, to showing that the experience of abandonment by God is also to be found within the Christian East, this essay hopes to demonstrate to both Eastern and Western Christians that there may be a variety of different experiences of abandonment by God, which have different causes and which therefore demand different responses from the person who experiences them. DIVINE INDWELLING AND DIVINE ABANDONMENT It is important to clarify at the outset that none of these authors claimed that God ever ceases to care providentially for the Christian, even during those times of perceived “abandonment by God.” Indeed, for most of these writers, the experience of abandonment is precisely intended by God as a way to bring Christians to spiritual maturity, and is therefore a form of God’s pedagogical care. When these authors speak of divine abandonment, therefore, what they actually mean is something far more specific, which is the departure, or in some cases the concealment, of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within each baptized person. The belief that each Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit is drawn from 1 Corinthians, where Paul informs the Christians of Corinth that their bodies are temples of...

Burying the Emperor's Son: Valens and the Legacy of Basil in a Syriac Funerary Sermon

One of the most famous aspects of Gregory of Nazianzus's panegyric for Basil of Caesarea is his account of Basil's confrontation with the emperor Valens. On the eve of exiling the bishop, the latter had called on Basil for aid for his ailing son. Basil's intercession ultimately failed to save the boy's life; later historians, however, remembered the incident as a dramatic, if temporary, turning point in the relationship between bishop and emperor. This episode forms the backdrop to a homily for a departed child and was transmitted in two Syriac manuscripts. Both attribute the homily to Basil, with the earlier witness presenting it as preached on the occasion of the funeral of a king's son. This description suggests the possibility either of recovering a funerary oration preached by Basil, now lost from his Greek corpus, or of a Syriac funerary sermon attributed to Basil in light of his encounter with Valens. This article examines both possibilities with an eye towards the content shared between the manuscripts—an extended exposition of children's nature and fate after death—and its resonance with the genuine works of Basil, his Greek contemporaries, and Syriac Christian authors from the centuries preceding the homily's earliest witness.

Метаморфоза «плоти» (Амвросий Медиоланский и становление западно-христианской антропологии)

What is the reason of the established perception of Christianity as a doctrine declaring body not only unimportant aspect of man, in contrast to incorporeal immortal soul, but also the fetters that are to be broken away from? The author attempts to answer this question through the analysis of the Biblical “flesh”, “soul” and “spirit”, which the Fathers and Doctors of the Church assumed to be identical to Greek and Latin notions. Thus, the notion of flesh in the Old and New Testaments may be used in their works as synonymous to body. As a result of such semantic metamorphosis, now and then implicit, the early Christian authors generate idea of man revealing traits of Greco-Roman anthropology, above all Platonism, i.e. the dualism of soul and body, as well as the negative attitude toward corporality. Which departs from the Biblical idea of man as an integral being made by the good Creator. The works of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, Doctor of the Church, religious figure and one of the greatest advocates of Christianity, help us to understand the process of this exceptionally important semantic transformation.

Francesco Piccolomini on honor

Abstract ‘Honor’ is one of the key notions in Renaissance ethics. The present paper analyzes the honor code which Francesco Piccolomini (1520–1604) articulates in his Vniuersa Philosophia de Moribus. Drawing not only on Aristotle, Plato, and ancient Stoicism, but also on medieval and early-modern Christian authorities, he argues that ‘proper honor’ is situated in the inner of a virtuous person because “everybody is the artificer of their own merits of honor.” Despite the aristocratic and patriarchal aspects of his ethics, he propounds an interiorizing and non-militarist interpretation of honor, which runs parallel with Montaigne’s concept of vray honneur and even anticipates to some extent Kant’s Ehrliebe.

К вопросу об источнике списка жертвенных блюд (Arnobius VII.24)

In the article is considered the question of possible sources of information of the Christian author Arnobius concerning the sacrificial dishes which in considerable volume are contained in his composition "Adversus nationes". Comparison of Arnobius materials with parallel fragments from other antique authors brings to a conclusion about the mediated loan of information through Varro's composition "Antiquitates rerum divinarum", not remained and very important for the Roman paganism. Varro could use in the composition ancient sacral books – Indigitamenta.

The radical embodiment of God for a Christology of a new era

The research focussed on the embodiment of God and approached this theme through a discussion on the deep incarnation of God in Christ. This article provides an overview of the existing literature on incarnation. Jesus Christ made God human and understandable. Theology is placed in the sphere of humanity by the humanness of Jesus. This positioning of theology in the sphere of humanity attended to the humanness of Jesus as a biological and social being, on par with human nature, in direct contact with other human beings. Jesus’ bodily existence makes his life and living inevitably fragile and vulnerable, but also one in solidarity with the ongoing misery of humans. Special attention was given to the Gospel of John and John 1:14 as an influential expression of the incarnation, and also to the concept of logos. The research attended to the implications of the embodiment of God and the way in which humans participate in the mystery of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. This mutual participation implies that the relationship with God and the call to reflect God is done as embodied beings and not apart from human bodies. The discussion of deep incarnation and God’s radical presence in flesh motivated the conclusion that God is part and parcel of nature’s vulnerability, pain and suffering. Jesus’ powerlessness accentuated the dignity of all bodies, and that there are actually no marginal cases of being ‘human’. The radical embodiment of God, the body of the earthly Jesus, reminds followers of Jesus of the significance of leading creative lives, resulting in authentic Christian spirituality that is embodied and vulnerable.

Our Faith in Creation, God’s Faith in Humanity: Edward Schillebeeckx and Pope Francis on Human Transcendence and an Anthropocentric Cosmos

Edward Schillebeeckx’s theology of creation can serve as a foundation for authentic Christian self-understanding in relation to the ecological crisis. Schillebeeckx provides a Thomistic view of humanity and creation as both autonomous and “given” from God. Schillebeeckx’s anthropocentric “creation faith” and nuanced view of secularization provide a way of preserving the uniqueness of humanity without devaluing nature. Structural parallels with Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ are developed in order to provide a fundamental-theological foundation for determining the proper role of human beings in relation to creation.

History and developments of pastoral care in Africa: A survey and proposition for effective contextual pastoral caregiving

The practice of pastoral care (cura animarum) over the ages has been informed and influenced by the need to develop creative ways (interventions) to respond to people’s contextual challenges. These approaches have been well documented. However, the history, developments and emerging pastoral care practices in Africa have not been documented. This article, by way of a survey, considers the pastoral care approaches that emerged in Africa from the period when Christianity was introduced to the continent. It addresses three interlinked questions. Firstly, to what extent has pastoral care approaches and practices in Africa been influenced by the African context and developments? Secondly, to what extent has the context and the emerging pastoral care approaches in Africa been discerned from historical developments and documented? Thirdly, what links can be drawn between pastoral care practices in Africa and its historical as well as cultural context? In answering these questions, the article retrieves pastoral care developments in Africa by discerning pastoral care during the periods of Christianity in Africa. The notion of cura animarum as ‘soul care’, referring to care for the whole person (holistic care, i.e., nephesh care) from a Christian spiritual perspective, will be employed as a framework. The assumption guiding the article is that pastoral care practices and approaches in Africa have arisen as responses to the contextual realities being experienced at the interface of Christianity and the African people. These realities arose and persist to this day as a struggle to relate, apply and live out an authentic African Christian life to cope with life in a meaningful way. It concludes by suggesting ways on how pastoral care in Africa should be practiced in the current period and going forward.

Lex: A Study on Medieval Terminology for Religion

Medieval Christian authors frequently employed the Latin word lex (“law”) and its vernacular cognates to mean something akin to the modern notion of “religion.” Like a religion, a lex was the collection of observances that marked a particular people‐group, such as Christians or Muslims. This article examines the category of lex in its historical context revealing both its similarities and differences from modern “religion.” It argues that the category of lex borrowed on Roman ethnography and Patristic exegesis and was inseparable from larger Christian ideas about society, human nature, and political order.

From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History by Robert Chazan (review)

Reviewed by: From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History by Robert Chazan David Berger Robert Chazan. From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism: Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xvi + 253 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400941900062X This book aims to assess the views of significant Christian authors on the trajectory of Jewish history, or, in an alternative phrase that almost serves as a refrain, the Jewish past, present, and future. It is divided into two sections, each of which contains four chapters. The first section addresses the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, Eusebius, and Augustine. The second analyzes the stances of Peter the Venerable (and, as a foil, Bernard of Clairvaux), Raymond Martini, Alphonso de Espina, and Martin Luther. The study is marked by Robert Chazan's signature qualities of erudition, insight, clarity, and balanced judgment. At the same time, the central theme of the book is beset by what strikes me as an element of artificiality. Thus, when one would normally say that someone was hostile to Jews, it becomes necessary to substitute or to add, at least periodically, that he had a negative assessment of the Jewish present. Moreover, the very classification of past and present is not entirely stable. One the one hand, there is a genuine Christian categorization distinguishing pre-Crucifixion Jews (who can be classified as the past) from post-Crucifixion Jews (who can be seen as the extended present), as well as a vision of an eschatological future where Jews will become (re)united with Christendom and hence saved. Chazan limns the contours of varying approaches to these transitions with great skill. However, his line between past and present sometimes adheres to this standard categorization and sometimes it does not. Thus, the Jewish past can refer not to pre-Crucifixion Jews but simply to a period like that of the Talmud, substantially earlier than that of the figure under discussion (130, 138–39). In a trivial sense, this shift reflects an ineluctable reality. When a medieval Christian figure writes about the Talmud, he is writing about the Jewish past. [End Page 454] But since he himself does not classify the Talmud as the product of an earlier era in a conceptual sense, it becomes problematic to compare his attitude to the Talmud or its authors to the approaches of Eusebius and Augustine to the Jews before the time of Jesus. As we examine the content of the book, its impressive qualities will emerge along with some challenges posed by its structure. The overall characterization of the Gospels is subtle and largely convincing. It contains little that deals directly with the trajectory of Jewish history, but it is necessary to set the stage. Similarly, the discussion of Paul has relatively little to say about the book's theme, but a critical component does. Here Chazan introduces Paul's expectation that at the end of days all Israel will be saved, which will play a central role in every subsequent examination of expectations regarding Israel's future. The analysis of Eusebius's approach presents a striking point about the Jewish past that was not characteristic, certainly not in its vigorous formulation, of most Christian writers through the ages. After the revelation at Sinai, Jews, he maintains, became the key civilizing force in the world. But once their punishment for the Crucifixion culminates in their exclusion from Jerusalem, Eusebius, unlike many Christian thinkers, loses interest in them. This is a refreshing and convincing presentation of an atypical approach, at least in tone, to the Jewish past. As to Augustine, Chazan formulates his theology in the language of the book's framework: the Jews had a great but increasingly flawed past, a present "flawed but rich with promise," and a future that is unambiguously positive (102). When we enter the Middle Ages, Chazan engages with three figures who are much less familiar to nonspecialists but whose work and environment he approaches with a command formed by years of impressive scholarship. Peter the Venerable's hostility to Jews is well known, as is the protection extended to Second Crusade–era Jews by his contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux. Chazan...