Patristic allegorical preaching as a mimetic technology: an exploration and proposal. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Origenist Principles for Allegorical Preaching in a Post-Critical Age
The patristic practice of allegorical preaching has been controversial since the Origenist controversies of the late fourth century. This form of interpretation has ever since been associated with its greatest and most infamous practitioner. Reformation polemics firmly associated it with the most flagrant abuses in scholastic theology, and in the modern period it continues to be a byword for theological speculations that are related to biblical texts in only the vaguest of fashions. Would it not be more faithful to the text to limit one’s theological claims only to the intent of the author? But such a circumscription of ecclesial interpretation is born out of a refusal to read biblical texts as Scripture. In this short essay, I submit that a renewed practice of allegorical preaching can fruitfully guide contemporary hearers in the theological reading of Scripture, against the hidden ideologies of authorial intent.
The Patristics in Favor of Allegorical Interpretation
This is a sequel to Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho:" Supersessionism, Successors, and Schism. This paper expands on why the allegorical method of interpreting the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh, Old Testament) and New Testament became favored by the Patristic writers in Christianity. It gets into the dangers and extremes of allegorical interpretation. The Platonic structure of allegory and theory of forms are discussed and how these components were used to pull Christian Biblical interpretation further away from the Jewish roots of Christianity.
Mimesis and Attention. On Christian Sophrosyne
Forum Philosophicum, 2018
One might well wonder about the source of Girard's knowledge. Where is it thought to have come from in the first place? From what vantage point are we supposed to be surveying the events he claims are originary? And what, then, is the condition for the very possibility of his Christian wisdom? In this paper, I argue that we can put forward a tentative solution by looking at one particular aspect of all the texts that Girard has interpreted: they are all written texts. Analyzing this in detail with the assistance of the proposals of Bernard Stiegler, I will claim that it is writing itself that has afforded us the possibility of paying attention. Moreover, in the second section, I shall also put forward an analysis of the gnoseological condition of the possibility of Christian wisdom. To do so, I expand on Stiegler's reading of Kant's notion of schema focusing on its relation with the hermeneutical notion of figura, as presented by Erich Auerbach. Commenting on the common rhetorical setting of both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Bible, I then show that these two written texts address a very similar problem-a critique of the way people judge-and also put forward, surprisingly, much the same solution: to properly judge, it would be better to take into account past examples of judgments and consider that, no matter whether we critique them or not, they will schematize our own experiences and influence our intentionality.
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
The article investigates the hypothesis that preaching implies more than merely verbalising, proclaiming and rhetoric reasoning. Preaching is fundamentally the art of poetic seeing; an aesthetic event on an ontic and spiritual level; that is, it provides vocabulary and images in order to help people to discover meaning in life (preaching as the art of foolishness). In this regard, preaching should provide God-images that open up the dimension of aesthetics and provide vistas of the ‘unseen’. The iconic dimension of preaching is about symbols and metaphors that help people to ‘see’ in everyday life (a poetic gaze) the presence of God in such a way that tragic events, the awareness of death and the anguish about the fear for loss and rejection become events for signifying life and for healing (the quest for wholeness). It is argued that practical theology should be about a liturgy of life. In this regard, the ‘ugliness of God’ becomes an aesthetic category in a Christian spiritual app...
Western European liturgy and mimesis, a dynamic paradox
Proceedings from the Somló Bódog Conference around the topic of Mimesis, 2019
The mimetic character of the catholic mass liturgy is hardly debatable, as the words of the founder of the religion sound as follows: Touto poieite … eis ten emen anamnesin („Do this… in memory of me”). This mimesis is necessarily a stylized and abstracted one, in tension with the non-mimetic dimensions of the mystery – a fertile relationship, one might say. Although the question has been extensively discussed from a theological-theoretical point of view, research on the mimetic character of the liturgy – which in no way limited to the mass – has remained a somewhat uncultivated field, especially from the perspective of the phenomenology of the religious experience in general. Certainly, a single lecture cannot promise to “pay off” such a debt, yet it may hopefully raise some relevant questions about the overall topic. For example, besides examining the constant parts of the mass (the so called Ordinary), it seems promising to examine the variable parts of the ecclesiastical year (Propers): it is not self-evident why it was needed to expand the otherwise heavily textualised rite with dramatic-mimetic elements, and it is known from historical sources that this expansion happened not without serious debates and not from one day to the next. One could cite a series of examples from the Palm Sunday liturgy, which reenacts the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (with a priest on a wooden donkey’s back in the role of Jesus himself) to the “fish supper” of Maundy Thursday and to the Good Friday liturgy with its ceremony of putting the Eucharist into a “grave” — not to mention such rites that are considered para-liturgical (outside of the scope of the official liturgy but openly tolerated), for example the custom of standing guard at the tomb of Jesus (so called “soldiers of Christ”). But the phenomenon is not limited to the celebration of Easter holidays examples could be cited from other parts of the ecclesiastical year, such as the Tractus stellae (Play of the Star) in the Divine Office of Epiphany, or the blessing of the wine on St John’s day. Future research should answer a number of questions about the proper function of mimesis in the liturgy. Where the boundaries of mimic involvement are drawn? What is the position of the actors of the mimetic ritual in the context of the whole liturgical drama, especially in the light of its interpretative context? What characteristics of the liturgy can be in conflict with mimetic rites, etc. That the latter is not only a problem of the past is evident from the cautious words of a recently issued (2002) directive of the Congregation for Divine Worship: “In relation to the so called ‘mystery or miracle plays’, it is necessary to explain to the believers the important difference between a reenacting presentation (mimesis) and a liturgical ceremony (anamnesis), that is the mystical presence of an event of the history of salvation. For example, the practice of reenacting the crucifixion with actual nails must be effectively discouraged.”
Allegoria: Reading as a Spiritual Exercise
Modern Theology, 1999
What I wish to argue for in this essay is the theological advantage of turning from the stasis of analogy and symbol (important categories for modernity according to Paul de Man) to the dynamism and semiosis of allegory. The move from static, atemporal discussions of analogy and symbol to allegory will lend itself to a rather different model for the hermeneutical task. It is one that is founded upon narrative, mimesis and participation, and one that presents a more dynamic view of the relationship between revelation (the event of Christ), disclosure (a participation in that event), representation and knowledge. I begin by examining a constellation of inter‐related ideas—narrative, participation in an unfolding tradition, knowledge and discipleship—in what is often read as an appeal in the Lukan Preface to historical facts. I then return to Aristotle, to develop the rich association between mimesis and phronesis, rhetoric and knowledge, and to point out the ambiguous nature of analog...
On Allegory: Some Medieval Aspects and Approaches
This collection of essays focuses on the ubiquity of the allegorical imagination in pre-modern western culture, and participates in a recent wave of resurgence of interest in the complex practices and ideas usually defined by the word 'allegory'. The contributors study the impact of the allegorical imagination on the production, reception and interpretation of literature, as well as its function as a tool of philosophical and theological enquiry, and its role in shaping the visual arts. Essays focus on subjects as varied as the general theories on allegory, allegory's relation to the human imagination, its usefulness or even inevitability as a human mode of cognition and its potential for the encoding of meanings that may be political, historical, religious and amorous. They discuss canonical figures such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boethius, Hans Memling, Pico della Mirandola, King James I and John Donne, but extend to include neglected but equally important figures such as Stephen Hawes or Thomas Usk as well as thematic approaches less concerned with issues of authority and authorship. As such the collection is a testimony to the variety, complexity, and adaptability of 'allegory' at the heart of medieval western civilisation.
Cassian and Foucault: Performativity in early Christianity
In 1967, in an essay titled “Fantasia of the library” Michel Foucault writes enthusiastically on Gustave Flaubert’s Saint Anthony. In Foucault’s view, Flaubert’s narrative depicts a purely material and performative account of Christian practice. A decade later, in his last lecture series on Christianity, Foucault turns to the Christian sources themselves. Rather than finding a performative account of spirituality in these texts, however, he sees instead the starting point for the later Western fixation with the true self. According Foucault’s reading of Cassian, the Christian confession of the self is intensified and its truth claims are enhanced in Cassian’s monastery rule. With Cassian, Foucault claims, a sharp break with the earlier Christian practice of exomologesis is replaced by a practice of exagoreusis thus paving the way for what is later to become the modern elevation of the subject and modernity’s obsession with the true self. In this paper, however, I would like to suggest that the reading of Cassian could have led Foucault to a different account of early Christianity. Cassian’s Institutes, I will argue, expresses a notion of spiritual life that is not far from the material and performative account of spiritual practice that Foucault finds in Flaubert’s Saint Anthony. On basis of such a re-reading, the monastery tradition founded by Cassian could be seen to play a very different role in the Christian thought tradition. In fact, it could be seen to destabilize later Christian truth claims and confessional demands by advocating Christian monastery life as a performative deputy creating rather than revealing truths about the self.