The Spirit, the World and the Trinity
Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John
By (author) Giovanni Hermanin de Reichenfeld
In a renowned and controversial passage Origen writes: “Of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, no-one could have even a suspicion, except those who profess a belief in Christ” (De Principiis, 1,3). But how come that ancient Christian authors elaborated a theology of the Holy Spirit? This innovative study tackles this question by analysing how the exegesis of the Gospel of John shaped the Trinitarian and soteriological agency of the Holy Spirit in the theologies of two of the most important Christian authors of all times: Origen and Augustine. In particular, the Johannine Father-Son-Spirit relation and the dichotomy between God and the world represent the foundation on which Origen and Augustine built their pneumatologies. At a closer look, one even realises that they both conceived the God-man relationship through a Johannine lens. The heuristic comparison proposed in this book is focused on the three large themes, towards which Origen and Augustine represent opposite approaches: the understanding of the immanent Trinity, the dualism between God and the world and the proper role of the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, Origen put forward a paradigm of participation to explain the oneness and Threeness of God. On the other, Augustine understands God’s self-relation through a paradigm of identity. These two Trinitarian constructions are shaped by a different understanding of the Gospel of John: while Origen’s theology mostly smooths the gospel’s dualism by interpreting God’s salvific act as a gradual spiritualisation of the world, Augustine tends to accentuate the Gospel’s dichotomies by radicalising the Johannine dualism. This study will therefore clarify the two specific paradigms in the two authors’ theologies: participation/transformation in Origen and identity/separation in Augustine, showing also how these paradigms are patterned after their different understanding of the fourth Gospel.
In a renowned and controversial passage Origen writes: “Of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, no-one could have even a suspicion, except those who profess a belief in Christ” (De Principiis, 1,3). But how come that ancient Christian authors elaborated a theology of the Holy Spirit? This innovative study tackles this question by analysing how the exegesis of the Gospel of John shaped the Trinitarian and soteriological agency of the Holy Spirit in the theologies of two of the most important Christian authors of all times: Origen and Augustine. In particular, the Johannine Father-Son-Spirit relation and the dichotomy between God and the world represent the foundation on which Origen and Augustine built their pneumatologies. At a closer look, one even realises that they both conceived the God-man relationship through a Johannine lens. The heuristic comparison proposed in this book is focused on the three large themes, towards which Origen and Augustine represent opposite approaches: the understanding of the immanent Trinity, the dualism between God and the world and the proper role of the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, Origen put forward a paradigm of participation to explain the oneness and Threeness of God. On the other, Augustine understands God’s self-relation through a paradigm of identity. These two Trinitarian constructions are shaped by a different understanding of the Gospel of John: while Origen’s theology mostly smooths the gospel’s dualism by interpreting God’s salvific act as a gradual spiritualisation of the world, Augustine tends to accentuate the Gospel’s dichotomies by radicalising the Johannine dualism. This study will therefore clarify the two specific paradigms in the two authors’ theologies: participation/transformation in Origen and identity/separation in Augustine, showing also how these paradigms are patterned after their different understanding of the fourth Gospel.
- By (author) Giovanni Hermanin de Reichenfeld
Other Titles in this Series
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Volume 2: Self-catholicization, Meta-narcissism, and Christian Theology
Volume 57
Seeking the Face of God
The Reception of Augustine in the Mystical Thought of Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St Thierry
Volume 11
My God, my God why have you abandoned me
The experience of God's withdrawal in late antique exegesis, Christology and ascetic literature
Volume 43
The ‘Universal Prayer’ in the Ancient Latin Liturgies. Patristic Evidence and Liturgical Texts
Volume 56
Inventio meditativa
The Rhetoric and Hermeneutics of Meditation in Hugh of Saint-Victor, Guigo II, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio
Volume 58
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era
Volume 28
Friendship as Ecclesial Binding
A Reading of St. Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus
Volume 48
The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
Volume 2
Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood
The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity
Volume 13
‘The Letter Killeth’
Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
Volume 51
Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland
Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba
Volume 3
Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
Volume 45
‘The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land
Volume 39
Similar Books
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and Ê¿Umar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae
Old Slavonic Version and English Translation
Volume 261
Contesting Labeled Identities
The Sociology of Gentilics in Biblical and Northwest Semitic Literature
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
