A Neglected Sixth-Century Manuscript of Origen’s De Principiis, Adamantius 22 (2016) pp. 323-327 (original) (raw)
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The present paper wants to offer a new direct and critical study of the titles, divisions, and chapters of the Περὶ ἀρχῶν in the Latin manuscript tradition. Hence, it is a chapter focused on Origen’s reception in the Latin tradition. What do these data contribute to the understanding of the structure of this work? Fundamentally, we can sum this up in three conclusions. Firstly, the great majority of the titles do not proceed from Rufinus, and, much less, from Origen. Secondly, the contents of a given section should not be judged by the title that heads it, which is very important for its interpretation. And finally, freed from some artificial divisions and titles, it is possible to understand better the structure of De principiis.
Origen's Protreptics to Philosophy: Testimony of Gregory Thaumaturgus in the Oratio Panegyrica, VI
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St. Gregory’s Address is a unique document depicting a situation of conversion in the early Church. It represents a necessary link between ancient and Christian traditions of exhortation. We show that there is continuity between them, for protreptic motifs of the Address are to a great extent inspired or even directly borrowed from Plato.
Contested Authority in the Twelfth Century Latin West: Bernard of Clairvaux's Reception of Origen
Adamantius, 2018
It is widely acknowledged nowadays that Origen reigns supreme among the Greek sources of the twelfth century Latin authors. The growing interest in Origen’s works during this period has been directly connected with the monastic revival and, in particular, with the name of Bernard of Clairvaux. Considered commonly as a follower of Origen in his works, Bernard has been identified as the most important promoter of Origen’s spirituality in the twelfth century. However, when looking for concrete evidence supporting this view, the results produced by the scant modern studies which explored the connection between Origen and Bernard are meagre and on occasion downright inaccurate. While Bernard’s knowledge of Origen cannot be doubted, the extent of Bernard’s literary dependence on Origen remains open to debate and in an urgent need of reassessment. Therefore, this article sets out to re-evaluate the existing evidence and to demonstrate that Bernard’s use of Origen is more limited than it has been argued so far. In doing so, it will also seek to unveil some of the reasons behind such a cautious handling of Origen’s works which contrasts with the way in which Origen was approached by some of Bernard’s close friends (e.g. William of St Thierry). Apart from the monastic method of learning, and the multifold process of composition of his works, this article identifies also Bernard’s active involvement in ecclesiastical controversies as an important deterrent from depending on Origen’s contested authority in his works.
ARC Journal, 2016
In a recent work, I argued that the tendency to regard Origen as a Platonist while neglecting the all-important Aristotelian dimension of his thought has led to deeply entrenched misunderstandings with respect to Origen’s philosophical theology. Despite compelling textual evidence in its favour, commentators continue to ignore the thoroughly hylomorphic, Aristotelian character of Origen’s thought, interpreting it instead in terms of a “Platonic” soul/body dualism. As a result, Origen’s views concerning the eternity of the world, his repeated insistence upon the inseparability of soul and body, form and matter, crucial to a proper understanding of his philosophical and theological system, have been almost entirely overlooked. A contributing factor to this seemingly willful misreading of Origen, I argued, can be traced to what Cavadini identifies as a “hermeneutic of suspicion.” In this case, the latter refers to the pervasive mistrust within Origen scholarship towards Rufinus’ Latin translations of the works of Origen – in particular the De Principiis. This hermeneutic of suspicion stems largely from the editorial work of Koetschau (1913), who accused Rufinus of having systematically purged any allegedly ‘heretical’ elements from his translations of Origen’s Greek writings. In his critical edition of the De Principiis, Koetschau sets about “supplementing” the Latin text with Greek fragments taken from hostile sources, all the while treating them as unbiased, objective witnesses to Origen’s original meaning. Butterworth (1936), whose translation of the De Principiis remains the sole English language edition, both endorses and expands upon Koetschau’s flawed methodology. While a critical attitude towards Rufinus is wholly justified – he openly admits to having modified Origen’s text – a correspondingly critical attitude towards hostile witnesses such as Jerome and Justinian seems peculiarly lacking. One ill-fated consequence of this imbalance has been to dismiss the centrality of embodiment for Origen as merely a Rufinian modification. Yet, as I hope to show, this corporealism is so fundamental to Origen’s worldview that attributing it to a few lines pencilled in by Rufinus is entirely untenable. The fact that commentators continue to do so can only be explained by their tendency to see Origen as a Platonist in the crudest sense; namely, as a thinker whose system is constructed upon a radical soul/body dualism. By ignoring the Aristotelian, hylomorphic character of Origen’s thought which, in the case of the soul/body relation is not incompatible with Christian orthodoxy, Origen is seen as much more heterodox than he in fact needs to be. The longstanding hermeneutic of suspicion with respect to Rufinus’ Latin translations of Origen embedded in Koetschau’s critical edition, and Butterworth’s English translation of, the De Principiis has thus resulted in deeply entrenched (and deeply misleading) assumptions concerning Origen’s theological and philosophical views. In what follows, I intend not only to demonstrate how distorting this hermeneutic of suspicion has been with respect to Origen’s worldview, but further, to examine the roots of the hermeneutic of suspicion itself. I shall contend that the latter is in fact a unique expression of a much broader methodological bias that Peter Martens calls “the Hellenization of Christianity thesis”. This longstanding and notoriously contentious historiographical construct is most closely associated with Adolf von Harnack, who regarded “the spirit of Hellenism” as a corrosive force upon an originally pristine Christianity. As such, Harnack subscribes to an all too familiar Protestant historical narrative of decline – a narrative which, as Wedemeyer demonstrates in the case of Tantric Buddhism, extends to the study of Eastern religions as well. Within Christianity, this narrative serves the Protestant polemic against Catholicism, in which the latter is seen as the (pagan) corruption of an original, Apostolic Christianity. As Jonathan Z. Smith puts it, “the pursuit of the origins of Christian origins takes us back, persistently, to the same point: Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics.” Given that Origen is inextricably bound up with these origins, it comes as no surprise that the study of his work has been profoundly, and adversely, affected. By showing how the Hellenization of Christianity thesis informs the hermeneutic of suspicion, and how this has contributed to deeply misleading assumptions regarding Origen’s theology – particularly with respect to the soul/body relation –, I hope to contribute to a much-needed reappraisal of one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of Christian dogma.