The Theurgic Turn in Christian Thought; Iamblichus, Origen, Augustine, andthe Eucharist.

Theurgy;Classical Studies;Humanities;Classical Studies

Parnell, Jason B.Verhoogt, Arthur Mfw ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Theurgy;    Classical Studies;    Humanities;    Classical Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/64788/jasonbp_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation aims to suggest a relationship between the thought of the ancient Christian theologians Origen (c. 185-254 CE) and Augustine (354-430 CE) and the theurgy characteristic of some pagan religious thought of the Greco-Roman world, and systematized by the Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus of Apamea (c. 245-325 CE). Central is the question of the indebtedness of Origen and Augustine’s own theorizing of Christian Eucharist to religious and philosophical convictions that are fundamentally theurgic, and that are most clearly articulated by Iamblichus.The study proceeds theoretically from the assumption that the transmission of ideas should not be interpreted strictly in terms of straightforward lineal descent, an approach that has previously limited discussion of theurgy’s role in Christian thought to its genealogical influence on much later thinkers, particularly Pseudo-Dionysius (late 5th – early 6th century).This dissertation argues rather that earlier Christian thought on Eucharist is already taking shape within a basically theurgic template.The justification for invoking Iamblichus and Origen is their participation in the Middle Platonist and Neopythagorean intellectual culture that shaped the Platonism of the third century.The addition of the much later Augustine is supported by his own conscious re-engagement of the issue, and particularly by his argument’s direct confrontation with the third century thinker Porphyry, the philosopher whose challenges to theurgy first provoked Iamblichus’ response in the previous century.Augustine is therefore reasonably viewed as a participant in an older debate, and is further implicated by his use of a rhetoric very much like Origen’s, whose postures of exclusion aim to obscure perception of Christian thought’s indebtedness to theurgic accounts of cult efficacy.By considering issues of philosophical first principles, cosmology, material reality and material embodiment, and the possibilities for a materially mediated ascent for the soul, the study aims to underscore what is essentially theurgic in the works of Origen and Augustine, as the two thinkers construct provisional systems of Christian sacramental mediation, shaped by a theology of the incarnate Logos, and conceptually parallel to the theurgic systems of hierarchic mediation whose validity their work strives to deny.