Upcoming workshop on Origen and his doctrine of freedom

Cambridge University is hosting a workshop in October - First Colloquium Adamantianum: Divine and Human Freedom. The Philosophical Significance of the Church Father Origen

First Colloquium Adamantianum: Divine and Human Freedom

- The Philosophical Significance of the Church Father Origen

Cambridge University  is hosting a workshop on October 23, 2017, on Origen and his concept of freedom. The Colloquium Adamantianum is a biannual workshop hosted by the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism. Each of the Colloquia revolves around the research of one pre-eminent contemporary scholar on Origen and the Alexandrian tradition, exploring the Platonist origins of Christian metaphysics. The first is about Theo Kobusch' scholarship on Origen. Everybody is welcome to attend.   

I. Divine and Human Freedom The Philosophical Significance of the Church Father Origen (Theo Kobusch)

Theo Kobusch’s interpretation of Origen, put forth in a series of seminal articles and his magisterial monograph Christian Philosophy, views Origen as the founder of a first distinctly Christian metaphysics. In contradistinction both to Greek and Gnostic thought, it posits freedom, rather than being, as the fundamental principle of all reality. God is viewed not as an unmoved mover, but as “unbegotten freedom” choosing to undergo suffering for the sake of humankind in universal love. Man, created in his “image” and called upon to achieve “likeness”, freely chooses his place in a sacramental cosmos.

 

 

 

 

 

Program

10.00–10.30 Douglas HEDLEY (Cambridge): Introduction - The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and the Significance of Origen’s Christian Philosophy

10:30–11:00 Isidoros KATSOS (Cambridge): Metaphysics and Method – Christian Exegesis as Ethics, Physics and Epoptics in Origen’s Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs

Coffee Break

11:00–12:00 Ilaria SCARPONI (Reading): The Notion(s) of Freedom in Origenian Metaphysics

Daniel TOLAN (Cambridge): Christ in the Midst of the ἡγεμονικόν – Human Subjectivity in Origen’s Anthropology

Lunch Break

13:00–14:00 Christian HENGSTERMANN (Cambridge/Münster): The Father’s passio caritatis – The Doctrine of Divine Passability in Origen’s Metaphysics of Freedom

Pui Him IP (Cambridge): Christology of the ἐπίνοιαι – Christ and the Trinitarian God in Origenian Exegesis

14:00–15:00 Marilyn LEWIS (Bristol): Theo Kobusch, Origen and the Cambridge Origenists

Karen D. FELTER (Münster): Creating Selves: Kobusch’s Reading of Freedom in Origen and Its Importance for a New Interpretation of Lady Conway’s Philosophy

Coffee Break

15:30–16:30 Christian PELZ (Bochum): The inner man as the moving principle – Origen's concept of προαἰρεσις and πρόθεσις or Kant meets the “Kant of Ancient Ethics”

Thomas HANKE (Cambridge/Frankfurt): Is Freedom of Choice Crucial for the Concept of Freedom? Remarks on Origen and Hegel

Time
23rd October 2017, 10–18

Place
Cambridge University
Faculty of Divinity
Room 6

Contact
Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism
Professor Douglas Hedley (Director)
Dr Christian Hengstermann
Dr Isidoros Ch. Katsos (Research Associates)
ch766@cam.ac.uk
cik22@cam.ac.uk
rdh26@cam.ac.uk

You can download the flyer here.