JSPS Special Lecture will be given by Assoc Prof Adam Cooper (Catholic Theological College, University of Divinity, Melbourne VIC) at Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo, on 20 January 2024.
- Presenter: Assoc Prof Adam Cooper (Catholic Theological College, Melbourne)
- Title: The sexual body as imago and memoria: a 7th century expansion of a patristic motif
- Abstract:
In Augustine’s anthropology, the remembrance (memoria) of God, along with knowing and loving God, realises the trinitarian image in the human soul. Other thinkers, including Gregory Nyssa and Maximus Confessor, similarly proposed an intrasubjective, psychological imago trinitatis. In Anastasius of Sinai (fl. ca. 680), however, we find a rare speculative proposal that finds this trinitarian image in the sexually differentiated, fecund, intersubjective bodies of Adam, Eve and their offspring. The relevant text comes from an assemblage of more miscellaneous works of Anastasius, in this case, from one of eight surviving homilies (ed. Uthemann, 1985). Anastasius develops a rationale for the special modalities by which Adam, Eve, and their (unnamed) son came into being, tentatively proposing in outline a typological relation between these modalities and the three persons of Godhead, a relation whose additional referential orientation to Christ constitutes a key aspect of the divine image in man. In the terms of this typology, the body in its maleness and femaleness thereby – and surprisingly – is understood by Anastasius as constituting an image and memoria of God, recollecting in its carnal interaction a triadic structure analogous to the divine relations, and proposing a vocation whose goal lies in fruitful, interpersonal communion. - Date & Time: 16:00-18:00, 20 January 2024
- Place: Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo