Knowledge, Language and Intellection from Origen to Gregory Nazianzen: A Selective Survey (Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity)

Epistemological theories of the patristic authors seldom attract attention of the researchers. This unfortunate status quo contrasts with a crucial place of the theory of knowledge in the thought of such prominent authors as Origen and the Cappadocian fathers. This book surveys the patristic epistemological discourse in its various settings. In the context of the Church history it revolves around the Eunomian controversy, Eunomius’ language theory and Gregory Nazianzen’s cognitive theory, where the ideas of Apostle Paul were creatively combined with the Peripatetic teaching. In the framework of Biblical exegesis, it touches upon the issues of the textual criticism of the Homeric and Jewish scholarship, which had significantly shaped Origen’s paradigm of the Biblical studies.

Anna Usacheva holds a PhD in Classical Philology and was a lecturer in Patristics and Ancient Languages at St. Tikhon Orthodox University (Moscow, Russia). Currently, she is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Theology, Aarhus University (Denmark).