Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Trigg, Joseph Wilson

Titel

Origen's Influence on the Young Augustine: A Chapter in the History of Origenism (review)

Ist Teil von

• Journal of early Christian studies, 2004-09, Vol.12 (3), p.364-366

Ort / Verlag

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2004

Quelle

Project MUSE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• If I understand him, Heidl argues that hearing a voice and lighting on Romans 13 while sitting under a tree made such an impact on Augustine in the famous garden experience recounted in Confessions 8 because his mind was conditioned by a passage from Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs, which was also among the libri pleni. In his Confessions Augustine gave two reasons for his difficulty in embracing as an adult the Catholic Christianity inculcated in him as a child: 1) a failure to appreciate that the Scriptures were "a thing neither accessible to the proud nor bared to children but humble in its approach even if exalted in its outcome and veiled by mysteries" (Conf. 3.5.9), and 2) a materialistic understanding of God, corrected by reading the Platonists, that prevented him from believing in the Incarnation (5.10.20). In Contra Academicos his image of his slowly smoldering soul bursting into flame after being sprinkled with drops of oil could easily have been suggested by Origen's citation in 2.8 of Luke 24:32: "Was not our heart burning on the road, as he opened the Scriptures to us?" Underlying this application is Origen's conviction that the same processes at work in the biblical text are at work in our experience.