by Joshua Shaw Lewis’ re-imagination and revitalisation of the pagan experience in Till We Have Faces and the rants of the early Apologists appear at first opposed. The one presents the gods of ancient religion from the inside, while the other presents them from the side of Christ’s triumph A.D., that is, ‘in the year… Read More “Destroy these very Books”: Eusebius on the Pagan Threat (I)
by Joshua Shaw In the beginning of Pascal’s Pensées, Part I, Chapter I (online here), there is the famous distinction between those subjects whose material is contained entirely in books, and so dependent entirely upon authority, and those subjects whose material (the corporeal world) is dependent upon sense perception (i.e., experience) and reason (paraphrasing the… Read More Pascal and Bavinck on Science and Theology
by Joshua Shaw Wrapping up Eusebius In the last post (here), we saw some of Eusebius’s clever maneuvering with Plato. Plato had quoted Homer ungenerously to prove his point that God does not change nor does he come to the aid of ‘mad and wicked men.’ Eusebius fought fire with fire, using Plato to purify… Read More Eusebius and his Sources: How Then Shall We Dialogue? (VI)
by Joshua Shaw Picking up where we left off (here), we will look at one more engagement of Eusebius with Plato before, in the last installment, drawing some final conclusions. In Book II of the Republic, Plato famously casts the poets out of his “city in speech.” Eusebius quotes from this book at very great… Read More Out-playing Plato: Eusebius and his Sources (V)
In the past three installments (here, here, and here) we looked at Eusebius of Caesarea as a reader of Plato and user of sources, noting the ways in which he came nearer to Plato’s meaning than most of his contemporaries (albeit by circuitous paths) and how he ‘saw through’ Plato’s writings to his fear of… Read More On Plato’s Fear: Eusebius and his Sources (IV)
by Joshua Shaw In the last two installments (here and here), we introduced Eusebius and began to look at his use of sources. Applying the sketch of C.S. Lewis’s father, we saw in the last post a typical example of Eusebius’s ‘labyrinthine’ methods of reading which nevertheless sometimes take him (much) nearer to a proper… Read More Seeing through Plato: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Sources (III)
by Joshua Shaw In our last installment we gave a brief introduction to Eusebius of Caesarea and his writings, ending with a very brief look at the purpose of Eusebius’ apologetic work the Praeparatio Evangelica (PE) and the beginning of his treatment of Plato (Book XI). In this post we will look further… Read More ‘A Labyrinthine Operation’: Eusebius and His Sources (II)
by Joshua Shaw Editorial Note: Joshua Shaw is a graduate in Classics from Hillsdale College (B.A) and Bryn Mawr (M.A.). While pursuing a PhD in Theology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, he is currently writing a historical, theological, and philological commentary on Books XIII-XIV of Eusebius’s Praeparatio Evangelica, in which are treated the… Read More “Staying for an answer”: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Sources (I)