Another Look at the Authorship of Hebrews from an Evangelical Perspective of Church History (original) (raw)

Rethinking the Rationales for Origen’s Use of Allegory

Studia Patristica, 2013

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.

Philosophy in Antiquity: The Greeks

LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2015

This work looks at the main themes, concepts and lead figures of the Hellenic philosophical tradition that not only influenced the Greek and then Latin world in antiquity, but also had a lasting influence on intellectual and theological development in the West right up until the Age of Enlightenment. To this end, the focus is on the Socratic tradition, through Plato and then Aristotle, and then the Stoic tradition whose strong imprint can be found on early Christianity, representing the core seed of Western theological evolution via Judaism, Christianity and then Islam.