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15 results

  • 1 - Modes of Knowing and Ordering Knowledge in Early Christianity

  • Edited by Lewis Ayres, University of Durham and Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Michael W. Champion, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Matthew R. Crawford, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • Book:
    The Intellectual World of Late Antique Christianity
    Published online:
    05 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023, pp 1-20

  • Summary

    This introductory chapter provides an overview to the volume, arguing that early Christian modes of knowing and ordering knowledge involved complex processes of appropriation, adaptation, reproduction, and reconfiguration of Jewish and classical epistemologies. This resulted in practices of knowing that established powerful ways of acting in the world and negotiating late-antique social structures. It shaped the behaviour of individuals and established norms for communal life. We argue that studying these phenomena requires consideration of intersections between a range of elite discourses, institutional forms, and the material world of the period. Foregrounding the myriad ways in which early Christian epistemology was embedded in earlier intellectual traditions and forms of life, we make a case that Christian theological commitments, in all their diversity, were an essential component in the development of distinctively Christian ways of knowing and ordering knowledge. Attention to theological assumptions and arguments is one essential element in understanding significant contours of late-antique life and society.

  • 30 - Prolegomena to Philosophy and the Ascetic Ordering of Knowledge

  • Edited by Lewis Ayres, University of Durham and Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Michael W. Champion, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Matthew R. Crawford, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • Book:
    The Intellectual World of Late Antique Christianity
    Published online:
    05 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023, pp 569-589

  • Summary

    This chapter compares the epistemological assumptions of late-antique Prolegomena to Philosophy with those of the Didaskaliai of Dorotheus of Gaza, a sixth-century ascetic teacher. It focuses on the epistemic role of godlikeness, the claim that the goal of philosophy, understood in terms of either Neoplatonism or the monastic life, is to become like God. In both Neoplatonism and in Dorotheus’ teaching, the concept of godlikeness orders knowledge and promotes ways of knowing developed in order to bridge the gap between the politico-ethical and the spiritual, the practical and the theoretical. Comparing Dorotheus’ teachings with the Introductions to Philosophy identifies substantial shared epistemic assumptions. A key difference between the schemes is generated by the epistemic role of humility in Dorotheus’ account.

The Intellectual World of Late Antique Christianity
  • Reshaping Classical Traditions
  • Edited by Lewis Ayres, Michael W. Champion, Matthew R. Crawford
  • Published online:
    05 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023
  • The Intellectual World of Late-Antique Christianity explores new perspectives on early Christian epistemology in relation to the changing discourses, institutions, and material culture of late antiquity. Early Christian modes of knowing and ordering knowledge involved complex processes of appropriation, reproduction, and reconfiguration of Jewish and classical epistemologies. This helped Christians develop cultures of interpretation and argument as textually oriented religious communities within the Roman Empire and beyond. It laid an intellectual foundation that would be built upon and modified in a variety of later contexts. Encompassing Greek, Latin, and Syriac Christianity, and an historical arc that stretches from the New Testament to Bede, this volume traces how diverse theological commitments resulted in distinctive Christian accounts of knowing. It foregrounds the myriad ways in which early Christian epistemology was embedded in earlier intellectual traditions and forms of life, and how they established norms for communal life and powerful ways of acting in the world.