"St. Macrina: Modeling Cappadocian Faith" by VK McCarty (original) (raw)
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The fourth-century Christian thinker, Gregory of Nyssa, has been the subject of a huge variety of interpretations over the past fifty years, from historians, theologians, philosophers, and others. In this highly original study, Morwenna Ludlow analyses these recent readings of Gregory of Nyssa and asks: What do they reveal about modern and postmodern interpretations of the Christian past? What do they say about the nature of Gregory's writing? Working thematically through studies of recent Trinitarian theology, Christology, spirituality, feminism, and postmodern hermeneutics, Ludlow develops an approach to reading the Church Fathers which combines the benefits of traditional scholarship on the early Church with reception-history and theology.
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Famed as a woman philosopher and teacher, Macrina the Younger’s philosophy nevertheless encompassed more than intellectual ideas. Throughout the Vita sanctae macrinae, Gregory lauds his sister’s life practices, depicting her engaged in community acts of mercy. From meeting the needs of the hungry and the sick, to giving largesse to the impoverished and taking on voluntary poverty, and even to abolishing hierarchy for equality, Macrina embodies the life practices Gregory had advocated earlier in De beatitudinibus. Reading Macrina’s Vita in light of Gregory’s understanding of mercy reveals a way life (πολιτεία or διαγωγή) replete with social compassion and actively engaged with the needs of the world. This underscores the living practice expected from philosophy in late ancient Christianity.