Torture and Origen's Hermeneutics of Nonviolence

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8206844
AutoresPaul R Kolbet (0000-0001-5461-9739, Boston College, autor correspondente)
Ano2008
Volume76
Fascículo3
Páginas545-572
Data de publicação2008-07-14
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfn053
PMID20681089
OpenAlexW2025467514
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas10

In a world where too many people continue to be tortured without recourse to legal protections, nonlegislative resources for preserving human dignity amid dehumanizing terror are much needed. This article analyzes the hermeneutical exercises constructed by the influential third century Christian intellectual, Origen of Alexandria, to prepare himself and others for torture and martyrdom. These exercises were designed to be a counter-asceticism that would strike at the root of violence both in the self and in society and enable his contemporary Christians to suffer at the hands of the Romans without losing sight either of their own humanity or that of their tormentors. Christians following Origen's practice were trained to resist not only the Roman Empire's violent disciplining of bodies, but the whole interpretation of the world that justified it as they embodied a nonviolent alternative to it. In this way, Origen provides resources for a particularly religious mode of resistance to torture that usefully supplements the contemporary human rights campaign and holds promise for overcoming some of its limitations.

Asceticism · Dehumanization · Dignity · Hermeneutics · Human rights · Humanity · Interpretation (philosophy) · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Torture · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification