The sermon collection of György Enyedi (1555–1597), the third bishop of the Unitarian Church, is an especially large corpus representing a unique handwritten textual tradition. During the almost one ...hundred years of active copying, a large amount of its variants were issued. Today we mostly know copies of triacases (thirty or thirty-three sermons in one block) or selected sermons in mixed collections. They can be easily identified by the copyists’ or users’ notes. Also, even if there are damages and disorders in the structure, the beginning and the ending of the texts – without taking notice of the regular variability of synonyms or word order – are comparable and can help in identifying unnumbered and unmarked texts. In my paper I wish to introduce four new sermon variants. They can be found in Contiones vetustissimae (Romania, Cluj Napoca, Academia III., MS.U. 262.), a Unitarian codex with mixed content. Until now the first part of it, a collection of sermons in Hungarian language – mostly shortened and often edited – has been ignored. This part contains the bishop’s four sermons without identification signs. The closer examination of these new variants, in comparison with other versions can help us to understand the strategies of the copyists. Also, we can examine more precisely why and how the textual details of these sermons remained the same or changed in any way during the 17th century.
The diatribe is a mode of exposition that grew out of the teaching of the popular philosophers of the Hellenistic and Roman period. It was adopted by St. Paul in his epistles and by the Church ...Fathers, first of all by John Chrysostom. In a diatribe, the author presents his thoughts in the form of an argumentative dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor; moreover, this dialogue is not narrated, but acted out, the author speaking both on behalf of himself and his opponent. Some characteristic features of the diatribe are the frequent use of the parenthetical phrase omitted 'says (the imaginary opponent)', the formulas phrase omitted 'what then?' (to introduce a false conclusion) and phrase omitted 'far be it from me' (to reject it), questions such as phrase omitted 'don't you see?' and vocatives such as phrase omitted 'man'. The diatribe entered medieval Orthodox Slavic writing through the translations of the New Testament and the Church fathers. This paper examines the impact of the diatribe on original texts written by two of the most prominent authors of the Slavic Middle Ages: Kosmas the Presbyter and Grigorij Camblak. Kosmas the Presbyter wrote his Sermon Against the Newly-Appeared Heresy of Bogomil in the second half of the 10th century. This work combines a pedagogical (instruction to the believers) with a polemical layer (refutation of the "heretics"). In a handful of passages, the transition from the first to the second layer exhibits the typical features of diatribe: Kosmas introduces a counterargument by the imaginary opponent by parenthetical phrase omitted and then addresses this opponent directly in order to refute him. Most of the time, however, the transition from the pedagogical to the polemical layer is less smooth. All in all, Kosmas's diatribal style does not reach the smoothness of his Chrysostomic models. Grigorij Camblak is the author of a number of homilies that he delivered in the late 14th-early 15th century. Seven of the published homilies attributed to him show a variety of diatribal formulas, which are investigated in more detail. Their function in the polemical discourse is compared to that of the original Hellenistic, Biblical and Patristic diatribal formulas in Greek. Grigorij Camblak's spontaneous use of these formulas in his original Slavic compositions shows that he internalized the polemical and didactic strategies of the diatribe and found ways to express its functions in Slavic. Some of his homilies indeed approach or even equal the level of Chrysostom's diatribal style. Keywords Diatribe; Dialogue; Kosmas the Presbyter; Grigorij Camblak.
This volume is tightly packed with surprising insights one simply does not normally hear from the pulpit, but yet are so obviously implied in the biblical narratives of Christmas and Easter. Dr ...Ellens has a unique way of cracking open familiar biblical se.
I claim that preaching in times of crisis is vulnerable to the tendency of therapeutic and other pastoral forms of preaching to put human solutions in the centre, moving God to the margins. I argue ...that crisis preaching must be balanced, being theocentric, and therapeutic if it is to be effective. I make the further claim that speaking of God at such times is undermined by theological confusion of how God is involved with his creation; a crisis of understanding driven by the question, 'Where is God when I suffer?' The proposal of Neil Pembroke (2013), that sermons are therapeutic when they point to the divine therapeia, the healing love of God, is argued to fail if there is no confidence in the involvement of God. In order to find the means of bringing the required balance I examine crisis sermons, and models of preaching, interrogating them with the term involvement. Finding it necessary to take these models further in the image of the God invoked, I consider the viability of applying apophatic method to crisis preaching in light of Michael Sells' (1994) definition of apophatic discourse. Such a foundation provides the platform to consider what it is to gain confidence in God's involvement by an appeal to the doctrine of impassibility in dialogue with the thought of Herbert McCabe (2005) and Katherine Sonderegger (2015). Finally, I evaluate the potential of applying such an approach, followed by bringing the apophatic method into dialogue with the radical deconstructive homiletic of Jacob Myers (2017).
The main body of this thesis consists of a translation and commentary on the two Sermons and Lectures Eckhart gave as Prior Provincial to his first Provincial Chapter of the German Dominicans of ...Saxony soon after his return from his first stay in Paris as Magister. The introductory chapter considers the provenance of the text and seeks to give insight into the nature of his expository work which is quite alien to the modern scriptural exegete. In addition, it highlights the main ideas addressed in the texts in order that they might be stepping stones in the reader's journey through the sermons and lectures. These include: - Eckhart's understanding of esse and the in divinis perspective from which he views this - God as principle - The dynamic of the Godhead and the twofold emanation of the Trinity and Creation - The Eternal Now - His understanding of analogy. The commentary will seek to address these key ideas, some of Eckhart's characteristic examples as well as noting his creative use of language. It will seek to place Eckhart's thought within the context of his time, noting the different influences on him from Augustine, various Church Fathers, the Neo-Platonists, Pseudo-Dionysius and Aquinas as well as Jewish and Islamic theologians. In addition, it will highlight areas where his originality can be seen, and others where he could be and was misunderstood. A final chapter will seek to assess the importance of this translation and of these texts for Eckhart scholarship in the English speaking world. It will also engage with the question of how Eckhart should be regarded, whether as he is often seen by Kurt Flasch and the Bochum school amongst others as a philosopher or again by others as a mystic. In my response I will argue that the many labels given to Eckhart can be best summed up in the fact he was a thoroughgoing Dominican, educated to the highest degree and at the same time through the Dominican/Augustinian tradition of prayer, a contemplative, hence his perspective of in divinis.
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