Eusebius was up to a whole lot of things in his thousand-page tome, the Praeparatio Evangelica. One thing among them was to show his readers “the true tradition” of Biblical exegesis and Christian theology.[i] Eusebius was interested in origins and in the deep history of ideas; he was rarely content to get things second hand… Read More St. Paul the Platonist and True Tradition
“The end,” said Origen, “is always like the beginning.” St. Paul said it this way, “in Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” In Matthew Gaetano’s last post he quoted Francis Oakley’s comment on the dissonance between the “God of the philosophers” and the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Following “the… Read More Broadening the Trail Blazed by Philo
by Matthew Gaetano The mysterious figure, (Pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite, presented himself as the convert of Paul after the Apostle’s sermon in Athens (Acts 17), where Paul taught, “in him we live and move and have our being.” In fact, Dionysius lived around the turn of the sixth century, and his writings reveal a deep engagement… Read More From him and through him and in him
by Joshua Shaw Eusebius calls Plato’s philosophy — and this is a fundamental move of the Praeparatio Evangelica (PE) — a “commentary on” or “interpretation of” (ἑρμηνεία) the Pentateuch. Eusebius is a little sloppy here, since the Pentateuch can mean Moses, or the whole Old Testament, or even, by extension, the authors of the New Testament… Read More Plato’s “Septuagint” and Alexandrian Judaism
by Matthew Gaetano Even though I went to a school whose mascot is a Quaker and grew up near some early American Quaker meeting houses, I have to admit that I didn’t know much about Quakers. I learned about how they used the informal “thee” and “thou” and refused to tip their hats to social… Read More Quakers, Platonism, and Religious Experience
by Joshua Shaw Are oracles just nonsense or are they a real power for evil? Under either view Eusebius of Caesarea is convinced that pagan oracles are to be rejected, but the question is “on what grounds?” At first glance he seems to waver in his judgement; moreover, the prominent role that citations play in… Read More Evil Nonsense or Nonsensical Evil: Eusebius on Divination (I)
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 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)