Christian teaching

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521460835.020

19 - Christian teaching

from B - CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Edited by

Lewis Ayres and

Assisted by

Frances Young: Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Lewis Ayres: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Andrew Louth: Affiliation:
University of Durham
Augustine Casiday: Affiliation:
University of Durham

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Summary

With unprecedented breadth and depth in the work of Origen of Alexandria, Christian teaching in the third century displayed a complex integration of spiritual sensibility, textual interpretation, and philosophical reflection. Such multifaceted Christian teaching unfolded amidst a developing Neoplatonist philosophical and pedagogical tradition which, from Plotinus to Proclus, sought a comparable spiritual, textual and metaphysical synthesis. Although the tradition of moral and intellectual transformation to which both Christian and polytheist Platonists were indebted was firmly rooted in the dialogues of Plato, by the end of the third century AD, Plato’s heirs had diverged from the master’s teaching in a variety of ways. Their chief departure was a thoroughgoing effort to recover the pedagogical significance of authoritative texts – for the Christian Platonists, the books of the Old and New Testaments; for the polytheist Platonists, a variety of Greek poetic texts, pre-eminently the Homeric epics.

The distinctiveness of Christian teaching in the third century is not to be found in formal interpretative techniques such as allegorical reading, which leading intellectuals like Origen shared with fellow Platonists concerned to demonstrate the coherence of spiritual and metaphysical teaching with traditional texts. Nor can Christian distinctiveness be located simply in the extent to which Christian theologians tried to show the biblical character of their conceptual reflections, for both Christian and non-Christian Platonists were increasingly concerned to display just such integration of textual explication and philosophical reflection. Instead, Christian teaching diverged from polytheist Platonist teaching in distinctive ways according to the degree and manner in which authoritative texts were allowed to shape thought and behaviour in ways deemed consonant with the character of the stories they told.

Keywords

Greek philosophy Plato Greek culture Christian Bible Christian teaching spiritual sensibility Socrates

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature , pp. 222 - 238

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521460835.020 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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