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Creating Christian Self-identity Through Rhetorical Definition, Classification, and Association in Origen
Samuel Hong (Claremont Graduate University)
Origen was one of the most influential Christian teachers in Christian history, influential not only as an allegorical reader of the scriptures but also as a rhetorical presenter of the biblical message. Since his second- and third-century Christians lived before the day of free Christianity and still was a minority within the larger religious and cultural world, it was necessary for a Christian teacher like him to read and preach the scripture in such a way as to help form a strong, viable Christian self-identity in the mind of his Christian audience. To achieve that goal, I argue, Origen made much use of these rhetorical strategies: rhetorical definition, classification, and association. In this paper, I plan to discuss how effectively Origen read the scriptures or how rhetorically he engaged his opponents through exegesis and preaching, so that he could create in the mind of his Christian audience a certain symbolic world in which the Christians are characterized by, or classified as, the spiritual, the virtuous, etc., and the Jews and the Greco-Romans as the carnal, the literal, the immoral, etc. This discussion will necessarily involve at least these two components: 1) a discussion of the specific exigency Origen felt as a church rhetorician, a sense of urgency arising from the "perceived" fact that his Christian audience lacked a clear sense of boundary to be set up against its cultural or religious competitors (the Jews and the Greco-Romans); 2) Origen's purposeful use of rhetoric to create a strong self-identity in the mind of his Christian audience. For Origen as well as for other rhetoricians, exegesis/preaching is not an objective reading and presentation of the sacred text; it is rather a continuation of the work of the Incarnate God, who like a masterful rhetorician adapts himself to the level of humanity so that he could meet it on its low level, form a certain symbolic world in its mind by his “human” mode of speech, and persuade it to live in conformity to that created world. Origen was such a Christian rhetorician, prominent among those who performed Christian exegesis and presentation in such a way as to create in the mind of his Christian audience a viable set of Christian norms and values to help it successfully compete with the Jews and the Greco-Romans.
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