The Liberal Arts as a Petichta
Just an idea I have been thinking about...
Quirky Christology: Theophilus of Antioch and the Logos' Preincarnate Peformance
For my current project, which focuses on how early Christians understood Moses' visions, I have been delving much into Second and Third Century Christian sources. During the past week, I have been playing a lot with Theophilus of Antioch with his treatise/letter/apology to Autolycus. Theophilus, let's say, has a fairly unique Christology in many ways. Much of this was explicitly rejected by his rough contemporary Irenaeus and has been discussed at length by modern scholars. But there is one aspect of his Christology that has been largely ignored and is, well, quirky. ὁ μὲν θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ τῶν ὅλων ἀχώρητὸς ἐστιν καὶ ἐν τόπῳ οὐχ εὑρίσκεται· οὐ γὰρ ἐστιν τόπος καταπαύσεως αὐτοῦ. ὁ δὲ Λόγος αὐτοῦ, δι᾽οὗ τὰ πάντα πεποίκηκεν, δύναμισ ὤν καὶ σοφία αὐτοῦ, ἀναλαμβάνων τὀ πρόσωπον τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου τῶν ὅλων, οὗτος παρεγίνετο εἰς τὸν παράδεισον ἐν προσώπῳ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ὁμίλει τῷ Ἀδάμ. Καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴ ἡ θεία γραφὴ διδάσκει ἡμᾶς τὸν Ἀδὰμ λέγοντα τῆς φωνῆς...
Comments
Which Torah portion?
Which פסוק רחוק does it begin with?
We just discussed petichtaot in my Biblical Interpretation class - the first one in Genesis Rabbah. Still a very cool literary form.
My point is thinking about the intersections or interdependence of different forms of knowledge, which, I think, is part of the basis of the Liberal Arts.
So, we could start with one thing, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and try get to another, such as Darwin's Origin of Species, and consider the different pathways and intersections of knowledge that could ultimately lead from one to the other.
Thereby demonstrating that the variety of forms of inquiry in a Liberal Arts education are ultimately interrelated, even if often in tension with one another.