Nicoleta Acatrinei: La nature humaine de l’homo oeconomicus: une enquête anthropologique dans le commentaire sur Matthieu de Jean Chrysostome.

Délivré à Antioche (390-398 A.D.), le commentaire chrysostomien sur l’Evangile de Matthieu est reconnu comme étant l’un de plus importants ouvrages de la littérature chrétienne. Traditionnellement on lui loue l’excellence en termes d’enseignement moral voir moralisateur en ce qui concerne les richesses et l’argent. Cette étude propose une relecture de ce texte à travers une enquête d’anthropologie économique. Ainsi, le portrait du riche tel qu’on le trouve décrit dans les homélies est interprété à travers les lois économiques qui régissent le comportement de l’homo oeconomicus exposées par John Stuart Mill dans son traité L’utilitarisme.Cette étude propose une analyse en parallèle de l’anthropologie théologique sous-jacente au discours de Chrysostome sur le riche et la richesse, et l’anthropologie économique sur laquelle est fondée la doctrine utilitariste sur le désir de la richesse. Pour Mill « l’amour de l’argent n’en est pas moins l’une des forces motrices de l’existence humaine et l’argent est même, dans de nombreux cas, désiré en lui-même et pour lui-même. » (L’utilitarisme. Essai sur Bentham, Paris, PUF, 1998, p. 90.)Chrysostome invite à une compréhension eschatologique du pouvoir performatif de l’argent sur le progrès spirituel du riche. L’enjeu final consiste non pas dans le conformisme à un catalogue des vertus à pratiquer et des vices à éviter, mais bien dans l’excellence intrinsèque de la nature humaine et les conditions économiques les plus favorables pour l’atteindre.

Ysabel de Andia: L'image et la ressemblance chez Irénée de Lyon

"Man in the image and likeness of God according to Irenaeus of Lyon".From whom does man hold his image? What makes man stand stand in the image and likeness of God?  What is the difference between image and likeness?Ireneaus' answer is inseparable from his criticism of the Gnostics, particularly their conception of nature and freedom. This communication on a central point of Ireneaus' anthropology also wants to highlight the contribution of Antonio Orbe's studies on this subject.

Awet Andemicael: Freedom, Transformation, and the Powers That Be: Irenaeus on Politics

  Irenaeus’ most concentrated and cited discussion of politics appears in Adversus Haereses 5.24.1-3. His apparently positive view of the Roman Empire, motivated by his biblical defense of the divine origin of secular political authority (Rom 13:1-7), elicits scholarly justifications in light of the historical reality of Roman imperial persecution of Irenaeus’ own Gallic Christian community.  In this paper, I argue that we must read Irenaeus’ exegesis of Rom 13 not only in the context of his obvious theological project of defending the unity and sovereignty of God, but also of his robust assertions of human freedom. Irenaeus reconciles the two theological commitments by distinguishing between divine authority establishing political offices and human responsibility for executing political offices. Moreover, while he recognizes the reality of tyrannical leaders, Irenaeus holds the populace primarily responsible for the state of a society, and envisions positive socio-political change primarily as a result of Christ transforming individuals and, through them, influencing the broader ethos of a society.  Such profound transformation is beyond the reach of civil authority, since the state functions essentially as a policing force, curbing bad behavior, and a facilitator, promoting civic prosperity through infrastructure and security services. In fact, while Irenaeus is theologically obligated to defend the divinely-ordained legitimacy of governmental authority in the face of problematic alternative theories, his theological use of political metaphors and terminology points to a political ecclesiology that subtly critiques the limitations of human empire in general and the Roman Empire in particular.

Peter-Ben Smit, Hagit Amirav: The Naked Demon: Alternative Interpretations of the Alexamenos Graffito

One of the oddities of the history of Christianity is the lack of early depictions—save tau-signs in manuscripts—of the crucifixion. Frequently, an appeal is made to the so-called Alexamenos Graffito, discovered in 1856 in a building, the Paedagogium (a kind of boarding school for imperial pages, dating to the reign of Domitian), on the Palatine Hill in Rome, as one of the earliest, if not the earliest example of such a depiction (the dating is debated with a dates being prosed between the third and fifth centuries, most popular is a date in the mid-third century CE). This graffito, scratched into a wall, shows a humanoid figure with a donkey’s head and fully human figure who raises one of his arms. As the humanoid figure with an donkey’s head can be seen as being attached to a cruciform structure and the text that goes with the depiction can be read as a mocking one—it would be well in line with the coarse nature of many graffiti, past and present—, the dominant interpretation is that it is a pagan inscription, made by someone who is ridiculing a man called Alexamenos, who is engaged in worshiping a crucified demon-God. In this short communication, we would like to challenge a few traditional concepts regarding this tantalizingly-minimalistic, yet thought-provoking, drawing, while offering an alternative interpretation, according to which Jewish ridicule of both pagan and Christian beliefs may be the key to resolving the enigma behind this unique graffito.

Pierre AUGUSTIN: From Erasmus to Field : Contribution and Limits of the Previous Editions and Translations of John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Philippians

In the recent translation of their standard edition by Field (Oxford, 1855), the sixteenth homilies On Philippians ascribed to John Chrysostom (the argumentum being here taken as the first homily of the series) have been considered “the most comprehensive treatment of [this] letter surviving from Christian antiquity”. However, their provenance and chronology, and the homogeneity of the whole series, have been challenged by the translators, thus emphasizing the need of a comprehensive study on their Greek manuscript tradition. As an inquiry is about to be launched by Sources Chrétiennes, this preliminary review aims at setting within the competing recensions of the text the respective manuscript evidence of the previous Greek editions and Latin translations, from the 16th century onward. Both the partial and isolated “editio princeps”, in 1526, by Erasmus (who published the two first homilies, though he did not believe in their authenticity) and the first publication of the series within the whole corpus of Chrysostom’s exegetical homilies on the Pauline Epistles, by Bernardino Donato, in 1529, were still based on a single witness (in the latter case, of the so called “rough recension” of the text). The more ambitious endeavours of Savile (1612), Montfaucon (1734) and especially Field (1855), though based on a partial recensio, have brought to light a much more elaborate recension, which, considered by Nobili and Savile typical of Chrysostom’s rhetorical preaching, has been mainly discarded since Field as a later attempt to remake an early "rough recension", more likely to be genuine.

Ghita Vlad Adrian: Seven Christian Perspectives on Islam

     The Christian accounts of Islam which I shall present in this paper come from seven authors, of which six are Byzantine and the last is Roman-Catholic. These seven are: 1. Saint Anastasios of Sinai (~630-700 AD); 2. Saint John of Damascus (675/676-749); 3. Theodore Abu Qurrah (750-820, Chalcedonian Eastern Orthodox bishop of Harran); 4. Niketas Byzantios (a philosopher from Constantinople in the nineth century AD); 5. Bartholomew of Edessa (13thcentury); 6. John VI Kantakouzenos (Byzantine Emperor between 1347-1354); and 7. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a Western philosopher who, through the amplitude of his philosophical position, becomes a universal figure in his own right, surpassing the strictly confessional borders of Roman-Catholicism.    The Eastern Orthodox countries are the natural heirs to the Byzantine Empire because, according to Nicolae Iorga's formula ”Byzantium after Byzantium”, they have intercepted the Byzantine heritage. Moreover, the Byzantines and later the Eastern Europeans have had a contact of long standing with Islam. This is why, when I search for the specificity of the medieval Christian perspective on the Islamic faith, it is natural to pick more thinkers from the Eastern part of Europe and only one Western author. The general refutal of Islam which is found in the texts of the Byzantine Church intellectuals is also endorsed by Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) who, at the very beginning of Renaissance in the West, defended the Orthodox Church’s teaching against the rationalist humanism of Western-minded intellectuals like Barlaam of Calabria, being then taken captive by the Turks in Gallipoli.

Lewis Ayres: Irenaeus and the ‘Institution’ of the Christian Intellectual

One of the central themes of Irenaeus’s polemic against the Valentinians is the charge that they fail as readers of Scripture. Against them Irenaeus deploys a panoply of techniques and assumptions that had been developed within Hellenistic and then early imperial grammatical traditions, and which were diffused through contemporary Greek and Latin literary culture. I have elsewhere explored ways in which Irenaeus claims the cultural capital of these traditions for “orthodox” Christian use, and hence how they come to determine emergent Christian understanding of what it is to have a unified scripture of ‘old’ and ‘new’ testaments. Irenaeus’s claims in this regard concern, however, not only methodological questions about how Scripture should be read, they reveal an emergent conception of Christian intellectual expertise within the Christian community. Irenaeus is reticent to talk openly of the value of intellectual expertise, but at times he lets slip significant remarks, and much is revealed implicitly. Using some themes from ‘Neo-institutionalist’ writing of the last three decades I will explore how far it is helpful to consider the elite Christian exegete as conceived by Irenaeus, as an ‘institution.’ Doing so will suggest some ways in which we might compare Irenaeus to Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian in ways that undermine some common stereotypes.

Khaled Anatolios: A Test Case for Alexandrian Christology: The Impassible Suffering of Christ in Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria

While Aloys Grillmeier's framework of an Alexandrian Logos-sarx Christology as differentiated from an Antiochian Logos-anthropos Christology has been the object of significant recent criticism, one incontrovertible aspect of Grillmeier's interpretation is that Alexandrian Christology, as exemplified in Athanasius and Cyril, was centered on the premise that the Logos is the active subject of Christ's humanity. While both Athanasius and Cyril extolled the soteriological benefits of this conception, they also both had to confront its most acute difficulty, which was that it seemed to require predicating Christ's human suffering to the Logos. A comparison of how Athanasius and Cyril grappled with this issue reveals both a foundational continuity between them as well as some striking developments. Cyril adopted Athanasius's paradoxical notion that the Logos simultaneously suffered and did not suffer (cf. Ad. Epict. 6), as well as some of the rhetorical strategies employed by Athanasius to elucidate this notion. But he had to counter much more pointed criticism, from Nestorius and his supporters, that the notion of impassible suffering was simply nonsensical. Among the strategies employed by Cyril to counter this criticism, one that has largely escaped scholarly attention is his integration of Christ's impassible suffering with Christ's high-priestly intercession. This Cyrillian conception represent both a continuity and a still under-appreciated development in relation to Athanasius's Christology.

Eetu Manninen: Avoiding Shame in Augustine's Early Dialogues

This presentation considers Augustine’s portrayal of shame as a hindrance for searching the truth in a philosophical dialogue and his ways to take this problem into account in his early dialogues. In the Soliloquies (Sol. II.7.14) Reason expresses her worry that the fear for embarrassment in the face of a defeat in an argument could be an obstacle for wholehearted search of the truth; Rather than admit his error, one may cling to his own stance to save his face. In my presentation I will examine, how this concern is visible in the awkward instances in Augustine’s dialogues, where their characters make mistakes in logic and are corrected by their dialogue partner. The conclusion is that Augustine addressed the problem of shame in his dialogues by presenting instructions how to avoid shaming one’s erring dialogue partner and by constructing exemplary reactions to these kinds of uneasy situations. In this way Augustine wanted to invite and encourage his readers to a fearless search of the truth.

Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski: Clement of Alexandria and the riddle of the Gospel of the Egyptians.

Clement of Alexandria preserved several unique quotations and references to Christian works which later were labelled as apocryphal and now are lost. In his polemic Clement used various literary sources to support his arguments. Clement’s legacy provide us with the intriguing case of a quote (Strom., 3.13.92) from the Gospel of Egyptians which closely echoes two Sayings from the Gospel of Thomas(22 and 37) and one passage from 2 Clem. 12. The paper explores some similarities and differences in asceticism and background of these two documents. It reconstructs the possible philosophical affiliations of both narratives. It proposes that the Gospel of the Egyptians was used as an authoritative narrative in competition with other ascetic Christian groups. This paper also re-examines the relationship between the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Gospel of Thomas.

Marcela Andoková: Quae est iustitia nisi misericordia? The relationship between mercy and justice in St. Ambrose's thinking.

God’s justice is his mercy. Although these two characteristics seem to contradict each other, in reality it is not like this because God’s mercy brings the fulfillment of true justice. Therefore the aim of this contribution is to examine biblical and eventually non-biblical sources of Ambrose's use of the terms mercy and justice, as presented in his exegetical works, especially in his Expositions on the Psalms and Luke’s Gospel. To pursue this aim, I will explore different contexts in which he puts these two terms together in order to speak about social justice, charitable works, care for the poor, etc.

Eirini Afentoulidou: Between Incantation and Prayer: From Late Antique Amulets to the Euchologia

Byzantine liturgy as crystallised in surviving Euchologia developed forms of expression that influenced other spheres of life. Yet the main features of the liturgical language remained distinct and recognisable, despite the creation of new prayers. However, several later Euchologia include prayers with elements known from Late Antique incantations. These can be entire formulas, or features such as abjurations and commands, detailed lists of dangers to be averted, angelology, otherwise unattested historiolae, etc. These prayers pertain to concerns often addressed in amulets, but absent in the standard Euchologion prayers: fever, migraine, gynaecological concerns, animal diseases, bugs attacking the crops, etc. The analysis of these prayers indicates that christianised Late Antique traditions continued to interact with liturgical practices of the official church throughout the Byzantine times and beyond. Taking as a starting point the absence of such prayers in early forms of the Euchologion, this paper will investigate their significance when they are mentioned later. This investigation will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the lives of Christian communities and their interaction with the supernatural in the period of transition from Late Antiquity to the Byzantine Middle Ages.

Sean Anthony: Christian and Muslim Scholarly Élites in Contact in the Late-Umayyad Period: Evidence from the Literary Sources

It is a truism the Umayyad caliphs, though Muslim rulers over a vast Islamic polity, administered an empire comprised of realms whose demography and religious landscape remained numerically dominated by Christian communities. Although this feature of the Umayyads’ empire was largely absent from their cultural and religious epicenter in the Hijaz region of Western Arabia, it was a profound, quotidian truth in the region at the epicenter of their imperial, military, and administrative strength – the Levant – where early Muslim elites lived cheek by jowl alongside their Christian subjects. This paper explores how this Levantine environment impacted the élite Muslim scholars whom the Umayyads patronized and provides evidence for the profound ways in which Christians scholars of the Levant, in particular those closely associated with the Jerusalem Patriarchate, left a significant, and hitherto unappreciated, impact on seminal Muslim scholars patronized by the Umayyad caliphs.

Scott Ables, Vassa Kontouma, Robert Volk, Johannes Zachhuber, Smilen Markov, Anna Zhyrkova, Sean Anthony, Habib Ibrahim, Zachary Keith, Peter Schadler: The Purpose of the Anti-Manichaean Polemic of John of Damascus

This paper aims to discuss three research questions:  First, since Manicheanism was unlikely to be an ideological threat under the Umayyad’s why did John write an anti-Manichaean polemic?  Second, can anything be said regarding the date of this polemic relative to John’s other polemical works?  And finally, is this the only anti-Manichaean polemic John wrote?  That is, is there anything more to be said regarding the critical attribution to John the Grammarian of another such work that the tradition attributes to John of Damascus?

Stanisław Adamiak: Chrism, Virgins, and Penance: Different Prerogatives of Bishops and Presbyters

The presbyters were equal to the bishops in the sacerdotal office of celebrating the Eucharist. However, there were others ritual activities, which were often performed by the presbyters, despite the bishops‘ efforts to keep them reserved for themselves. Among them, the particular importance seemed to be attached to blessing and using the holy oils (and particularly the chrism), blessing the virgins, and administering penance. Our sources, especially the canons of the councils and the papal letters show how uneasy balance was achieved in all those issues between the fourth and the seventh century.

Oscar Velasquez: Augustinian Interiority and Platonic Dialectics: From Cassiciacum to Confessions.

This proposal suggests that both Platonic dialectics and Augustinian interiority have in their origin the similar character of a spiritual methodology for the correct search that leads to the intelligible truth. From Cassiciacum’s dialogues and several of the next dialogues was developed a philosophy of interiority, which reveals an explicit Platonic and Neoplatonic origin. This philosophical methodical procedure to intelligible truth, has two variants, particularly examined in Republic and in Phaedo respectively. The former is accomplished through paideia, the latter through a ‘shortcut’ (ἀτραπός τις, Fd 66b) that leads into the interior self. Both methods are present from Casiciacum on, and the latter shows a particular interior turn. This intimate gyre of the soul toward the self is a dialectical methodology of interiority. I would consider in Augustine what I call the Christian turn of Platonic dialectis, i. e. the uia or path to encounter with Christ the Truth. Cassiciacum’s dialogues ord., Acad.will reveal direct links with dialectics, besides those texts clearly originating from Plotinus and possibly, Porphyry. The sol. close a cycle of interiority characterized by the absence of the name of Christ and explicit Christian theology. From those dialogues on Platonic dialectics is mostly called the uia. The transition to a properly Christian interiority will be analyzed in mag., lib. arb., uera rel. It is suggested that a full mature method of a Christian methodic path to truth will culminate in conf. The Verb is the true uia of salvation.

Pascal Olivier Angue: Les seniores laici, "une institution curieuse".

Le quatrième siècle est marqué dans l´Eglise nord-africaine par la présence des seniores laici, "une institution curieuse" , selon l´expression de Paul Monceaux dans sa littérature de l´Afrique chrétienne. Encore appelés seniores plebis ou seniores populi, ces fidèles laics constituent une sorte de conseil pastoral qui assiste l´eveque dans l´administration de la communauté.Leur présence en Afrique n´est pas fortuite. L´existence des conseils de notables dans les villages éloignés de l´administration romaine centrale chargés de la gestion de ces derniers a contribué à l´éclosion de cette institution dans l´expansion du christianisme vers les zones rurales. En outre, les persécutions dès le milieu du troisième siècle visant particulièrement le clergé à travers tortures, l´exil ou la mort, les laics devaient prendre plus de responsabilités au sein de la communauté. Cette insuffisance du clergé resurgit au début du cinquième siècle dans la réintégration des donatistes dans l´Eglise. Ces notables sont évoqués aussi bien dans l´Eglise catholique que chez les donatistes notamment à Carthage, à Abthugni, à Putput, Assuras et à Musti, à Kairouan, à Nova Germaniae, à Cirta et à Hippone. Ils sont par ailleurs mentionnés par saint Optat, par les documents relatifs au donatisme, les actes des conciles et saint Augustin.Dans leurs fonctions, les seniores agissaient comme organe de controle vis-à-vis de l´éveque. En cas de malversations, ils adressaient une plainte au synode ou au concile et représentaient par ailleurs la communauté pendant les persécutions à l´extérieur.

Kirsten Anderson: Christ’s Subjection and Human Salvation in Gregory of Nyssa’s Tunc et Ipse

In his Tunc et Ipse,Gregory of Nyssa addresses the concept of “subjection” (ὑποταγή) as used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:28: at the end, when all things are subjected to Christ, then Christ himself will be subjected to God. This short communication will treat Gregory’s interpretation of Christ’s “subjection,” with a specific view to the relationship he sees between Christ’s subjection and that “subjection” which the Psalms portray as salvation for human beings. Eager to ward off a “heretical” interpretation that would see in this passage confirmation of Christ’s ontological subordination to the Father, Gregory interprets “subjection” in terms of the complete freedom from evil that is found in perfect union with God. He insists that “subjection” does not here mean what it does in ordinary human speech, with its implications of abject servility, constraint, or youthful deference. The correct interpretation of Christ’s “subjection,” as Gregory’s treatment bears out, has both ontological and moral dimensions: not only is ontological inferiority rejected in the case of Christ, but also a subservient manner of relating to the Father. Since Paul puts Christ forward as the “first fruits” of our salvation, Gregory draws conclusions from Christ’s subjection for the "subjection" to God that is proper to, and salvific for, human beings. My communication will focus on these ramifications for human relatedness to God that Gregory sees in Christ’s "subjection."

Maria Theotokos Adams, SSVM: Beyond Diabasis Alone: Philo’s Alternative Liturgical Theology of Pascha as Received in Early Christian Computus

Drawing on Philo of Alexandria, Origen famously promoted a corrective etymology for pascha as meaning “crossing” (diabasis) from the transliterated Hebrew word fasek, as opposed to “suffering” (paschein) from the homophone Greek verb. Many early Christian authors readily accepted and shared this view including Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzus, Jerome, Maximus of Turin, and Augustine. Philo seems to interpret feast of pascha as a memorial emphasizing the crossing of the Red Sea (diabasis) over and above the slaughter of the lamb and the miracle of its protection for the Hebrew families on 14 Nisan. However, a more comprehensive reading of Philo’s etymologies and references to pascha reveals that he equally used diabateria as a second term to explain the meaning of the feast. His choice of this expression meaning “the sacrifice before a crossing” suggests a daring Classical allusion to Spartan practice which recasts the two poles of the Exodus events – sacrifice and passage – into a new harmonic whole. Anatolius of Laodicea and Eusebius of Caesarea demonstrate how the alternative etymology diabateria was preferred within the context of the technical and theological challenges of paschal computus. Like Origen they invoke the antiquity and authority of the Jewish scholars to defend their methods, but they depart from Origen in his nearly exclusive use of diabasis in favor of a balanced solution between sacrifice on 14 Nisan (diabateria) and victorious passage on “the third day” (diabasis).

J. José Alviar: Origen vs. Origen: His Spiritual and Literal Interpretations of Biblical Journeys

This communication considers a set of texts by Origen in which he propounds a spiritual meaning to biblical narratives of journeys -- of Abraham, of Rebecca, of Enoch, of the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt. The texts for consideration provide a tantalizing contrast with other, more Platonically-flavored passages of the Alexandrian wherein he seems to prefer detachment in the more physical sense from the world and common earthly activities, and thus raise the suspicion of a tension -possibly unresolved- present in Origen's own thinking.This brief survey could also shed some light on the modern discussion about Origen's influence on the Desert Fathers and Mothers, who embodied a peculiar form of "exodus" from the world and its affairs.