Allegorizations of the Active and Contemplative Lives in Philo, Origen,

Allegorizations of the Active and Contemplative Lives in Philo, Origen, Augustine, and GregoryThis paper examines the allegorical interpretations addicted to several Scriptural pairs as they relate to the idea of the supple and wistful lives in Philo, Origen, Augustine, and Gregory. As will be shown, Augustine combines ele ments found in the twain previous writers to form his allegory of the two wives of Jacob as representative of the active and reflective lives.In Philo, most of the essential elements of later Christian thinking on the active and ruminative lives are already present. The superiority of the contemplative life is given at the beginning of his treatise on it I find discussed the Essenes, who persistently pursued the active life and excelled in all or, to assign it more moderately, in most of its departments. I will now run short at once in accordance with the sequence required by the subject to say what is needed about those who embraced the life of contempla tion (De Vita Cont. 1 471). The idea that the contemplative life follows upon the active is also present here, and is clarify elsewhere ... infants have one place and full grown men another. The one is named ascetic training and the other is called wisdom... For what life is better than a contemplative life, or more appropriate to a rational be? (De Migr. Abr. 9 443). Both the active and contemplative lives are virtuous, but the contemplative is the more mature and fuller expression of the life of wisdom it should, however, scarce be practiced once the former has been used as a training ground.Philo allegorizes Leah and Rachel in several related ways in his flora (cf. Sly, 163-74). At one point he identifies Rachel with bodily beauty, ... ... moves away. She loves to contemplate her beautiful eyes I love to use my hands to adorn myself her pleasure is in reflection, mine in act. (Purgatorio xxvii, 101-08, Musa trans.) What has been called the breadth of Augustines vision and the lyrical raptus of his language (Mason, 45) has cast a long shadow indeed.Works Cited * Butler, D. C. westerly Mysticism The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life. 2nd ed. rising York Harper & Row, 1966. * Mason, M. E. Active Life and Contemplative Life A canvass of the Concepts from Plato to the Present. Milwaukee Marquette University Press, 1961. * Runia, D. T. Philo in Early Christian Literature A Survey. Assen Van Gorcum/Minneapolis justification Press, 1993. * Sly, D. Philos Perception of Women. Atlanta Scholars Press, 1990.