All about Origen: New audios available from AAR 2017 (Boston)

As announced in an earlier post, the ITN team was granted the opportunity to host five AAR seminars focusing on Origen and the Roots of Human Freedom and Human Dignity in the West. You can now listen to three of the presentations from the AAR in Boston 2017 by ESRs Zocchi, Felter and Bunkenborg.

Boston papers as audios

As announced in an earlier post, the ITN team was granted the opportunity to host five AAR seminars focusing on Origen and the Roots of Human Freedom and Human Dignity in the West. The Annual Meetings are hosted by the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature and are the world's largest gathering of scholars interested in the study of religion. The contributions from the panels will later be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The ITN panel in 2017 took place at the AAR Annual Meeting in Boston in November. Many ITN members and other researchers joined the event, and many interesting papers were presented. Those by Elisa Zocchi, Karen Felter and Kristian Bunkenborg were recorded and posted on SoundCloud. 

Elisa Zocchi (University of Münster)

The aim of Zocchi’s research project is to investigate the reception of Origenian ideas in modern Catholic theology with a focus on the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In Balthasar, there is a direct and clear reception of Origenian ideas on a broad scale, and as he is one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, to study Balthasar provides a look at the reception of Origen’s theology in general. 

Elisa Zocchi - It Is Precisely the World That Counts; From Origen To Balthasar

Karen Felter (University of Münster) 

Felter’s research focuses on how the idea of human freedom relates to the body among the so-called Cambridge Platonists and Latitudinarian Anglicans with a specific focus on the reception of Origen in Anne Conway. The project explores how the debates on body and freedom of the 17th century can interact with the bodily epistemology of today.

Karen Felter - The Middle Way of Truth; The Role of Christ in Anne Conway’s Trinitarianism

Kristian Bunkenborg (Martin Luther University) 

Bunkenborg explores how G.E. Lessing (1729-1781) refers to Origen in the theological and philosophical debates of the 1770s, and how he uses his ideas to form his own religio-philosophic argumentation. Lessing’s contributions played a crucial role in forming the enlightened concepts of human autonomy and free will that came to dominate the modern understanding of humanity.

Kristian Bunkenborg - Castration and Democratic Rights: Origen In Post-Apartheid South Africa

Remember, you can find all the ITN audios here: soundcloud.com/user-237248455