Erasmus S Life Of Origen

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) hailed Origen of Alexandria (185-254) as a holy priest, a gifted homilist, a heroic Christian, and a celebrated exegete and theologian of the ancient Church. In this book Thomas Scheck presents one of the fruits of Erasmus's endeavours in the field of patristic studies by providing the first English translation of Erasmus' final work, the Prefaces to his edition of Origen's writings.

Erasmus produced his five editions of the New Testament in Greek and Latin and his Paraphrases on the Gospels and Epistles almost contemporaneously with the tumultuous events that accompanied the beginnings of the Reformation in Europe. At the same time, his scholarship was a signal illustration of the Christian Humanism of northern Europe. His remarkable scholarship is translated and annotated in the Collected Works of Erasmus, volumes 42-60, published by the University of Toronto Press. This volume, CWE 41, seeks to set in perspective in a major introductory essay the full range of that scholarship. It traces the origin of Erasmus' work and its development over the course of the last two decades of his life, placing the work on the New Testament in the context of his life and the political and religious events of his age, revealing the endeavour as a process, and thus giving the reader illuminating points of reference for the many cryptic allusions in his annotations and paraphrases. The book includes an annotated translation of three of Erasmus' major writings on Scripture and its interpretation -- the Paraclesis, the Ratio verae theologiae ('System of True Theology'), and the Apologia (defense of his work). It includes as well some of his further attempts to clarify his endeavour -- relevant letters and a vitriolic response to his 'crabby critics' (Contra morosos). The volume offers a unique insight into the production of Erasmus' scholarship in book form, illustrating abundantly the special features that made his editions of the New Testament and his Paraphrases both esthetically pleasing and effectively marketable products.

Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence is a comprehensive introduction to Erasmus's life, works, and thoughts. It integrates the best scholarship of the past twenty years and will appeal to undergraduates in all areas of cultural history as well as Erasmus specialists.

This interrogation of Origen's legacy for the 21st Century returns to old questions built upon each other over eighteen centuries of Origen scholarship-problems of translation and transmission, positioning Origen in the histories of philosophy, theology, and orthodoxy, and defining his philological and exegetical programmes. The essays probe the more reliable sources for Origen's thought by those who received his legacy and built on it. They focus on understanding how Origen's legacy was adopted, transformed and transmitted looking at key figures from the fourth century through the Reformation. A section on modern contributions to the understanding of Origen embraces the foundational contributions of Huet, the twentieth century movement to rehabilitate Origen from his status as a heterodox teacher, and finally, the identification in 2012 of twenty-nine anonymous homilies on the Psalms in a codex in Munich as homilies of Origen. Equally important has been the investigation of Origen's historical, cultural, and intellectual context. These studies track the processes of appropriation, assimilation and transformation in the formation and transmission of Origen's legacy. Origen worked at interpreting Scripture throughout his life. There are essays addressing general issues of hermeneutics and his treatment of groups of books from the Biblical canon in commentaries and homilies. Key points of his theology are also addressed in essays that give attention to the fluid environment in which Origen developed his theology. These essays open important paths for students of Origen in the 21st century.

Tradition and the rule of faith are particularly apt themes for this collection of studies. The essays are written in honor of Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., renowned American patristic scholar whose research and writings have focused on this particular theme.

This book presents the history of Erasmus, an European humanist; and his essay against war. "With Erasmus a new period opens. Two things broadly distinguish him, as a scholar, from the men before and after him. First, he was not only a refined humanist, writing for the fastidious few, and prizing no judgment but theirs; he took the most profitable authors of antiquity,—profitable in a moral as well as a literary sense,—chose out the best things in them,—and sought to make these things widely known,—applying their wisdom or wit to the circumstances of his own day. Secondly, in all his work he had an educational aim,—and this of the largest kind. The evils of his age,—in Church, in State, in the daily lives of men,—seemed to him to have their roots in ignorance,—ignorance of what Christianity meant,—ignorance of what the Bible taught,—ignorance of what the noblest and most gifted minds of the past, whether Christian or pagan, had contributed to the instruction of the human race. Let true knowledge only spread, and under its enlightening and humanizing influence a purer religion and a better morality will gradually prevail. Erasmus was a man of the world; but with his keen intellect, so quickly susceptible to all impressions, he made the mistake, not uncommon for such temperaments, of overrating the rapidity with which intellectual influences permeate the masses of mankind. However, no one was ever more sistently or brilliantly true to an idea than Erasmus was to his; and it is wonderful how much he achieved..."