history.princeton.edu/people/peter-brown
Autobiography Journeys of the Mind
(2023) Princeton Press
press.princeton.edu
Chapter 95
"From Origen to Augustine" (pages 651 - 660)
Two great Christian writers separated by
two centuries -- Origen of Alexandria (185-254)
and Augustine of Hippo (354-430).
[when writing The Body and Society in 1980s]
Prof. Brown had long been acquainted with
Augustine. But Origen was new. . .a larger-
than-life figure, both in his own days and
in all later centuries. . .Immensely productive,
he created in Caesarea Maritima (Palestine)
a library that formed the nucleus of what was,
in its time, the equivalent of the first Christian
university. Later generations of Greek &
Syrian Christians looked back to him as a
role model of the Christian scholar and as
a seemingly inexhaustible source of erudition
and of challenging ideas. . .
I warmed to Origen's vision of the seemingly
unlimited potential for change in the individual.
He insisted that the body was not a static prison
of the soul. It was something more flexible: a
finely calibrated vehicle for the soul -- a light
bed in which the soul rested. The body itself
was a fluid thing, sensitive to the movements
of the soul. It could be transformed along with
the soul; and it even played a positive role in
spurring on the soul to ever-greater effort to
overcome its limitations. Behind Origen's
view of the fluidity of the person lay a sense
of the immensity of the cosmos. He presented
a boundless world where God had infinite time
in which to bring each and every human being
to perfection. He insisted that, even in this
life, body and soul alike could change and expand
in ways that went far beyond our cramped,
socially bound imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment