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"In this chapter I argue for a reassessment of current academic opinion regarding the theme of the spiritual senses in the writings of Origen of Alexandria (c. 185--c. 254). Specifically, John Dillon has claimed that it is exclusively in Origen's late works that one finds a 'proper' doctrine of the spiritual senses (the crucial features of which will be discussed below).1 Dillon argues that Origen's early works, by contrast, evince only a metaphorical use of the language of sensation.2 The early Origen, according to this reading, is not actually describing the perception of spiritual realities, as is typically thought. Instead, in his early writings Origen uses terms such as 'seeing' and 'hearing' in a figurative manner to describe 'understanding', placing no particular value on the sensory dimension to the terms. In contrast to this assessment, however, I argue here that unexamined aspects of Origen's early writings in fact demonstrate noteworthy continuities between his early and late uses of sensory language. In particular, portions of Origen's early scriptural commentaries and Deprincipiis show that his 'doctrine of the spiritual senses' emerges much earlier than has been recently supposed"--
List of contents
Introduction Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley; 1. Origen of Alexandria Mark J. McInroy; 2. Gregory of Nyssa Sarah Coakley; 3. Augustine Matthew R. Lootens; 4. Gregory the Great George Demacopoulos; 5. Pseudo-Dionysis the Areopagite Paul L. Gavrilyuk; 6. Maximus the Confessor Frederick D. Aquino; 7. Alexander of Hales Boyd Taylor Coolman; 8. Thomas Gallus Boyd Taylor Coolman; 9. Bonaventure Gregory F. LaNave; 10. Thomas Aquinas Richard Cross; 11. Late medieval mystics Bernard McGinn; 12. Nicholas of Cusa Garth Green; 13. Jonathan Edwards and his Puritan predecessors William J. Wainwright; 14. John Wesley Mark T. Mealey; 15. Hars Urs von Balthasar and Karl Rahner Mark J. McInroy; 16. Analytic philosophers of religion William J. Abraham; Bibliography.
About the author
Paul L. Gavrilyuk is Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the University of St Thomas, Minnesota. He is the author of The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (2004) and Histoire du catéchuménat dans l'église ancienne (2007).Sarah Coakley is Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Her previous publications include Powers and Submissions: Philosophy, Spirituality and Gender (2002) and she was the editor of Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa (2003) and co-editor (with Charles M. Stang) of Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (2009).
