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Three Ways to Imitate Paul in Late Antiquity: Ekstasis, Ekphrasis, Epektasis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2021

Michael Motia
Michael Motia*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Boston; [email protected]
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Abstract

Robert Orsi’s argument that religion, more than a system of “meaning making,” is a “network of relationships between heaven and earth” helps us understand what is at stake in imitation for early Christians. The question for Orsi is not, “What does it mean to imitate Paul?” as much as it is, “In what kind of relationship is one engaged when one imitates Paul?” Christians argue over both what to imitate (Who is Paul?) and how to imitate (How should Christians relate to Paul in order to be like him or to render him present?). The what has received lots of scholarly attention; this paper focuses on the how. I compare the range of possibilities of how to imitate Paul by focusing on three influential accounts of mimesis: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (ekstasis), John Chrysostom (ekphrasis), and Gregory of Nyssa (epektasis).

Keywords

mimesisimitationGregory of NyssaJohn ChrysostomPseudo-Dionysiusrhetoric
Type
Articles
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 96 - 117
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College

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References

1 1 Cor 11:1.

2 On imitation of Paul in the New Testament, see Elizabeth Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991). See also Laura Nasrallah, “1 Corinthians,” in The Letters and Legacy of Paul (ed. Margaret Aymer, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, and David A. Sanchez; Fortress Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016) 427–71, and the secondary literature therein.

3 See, e.g., Andrew Jacobs, “A Jew’s Jew: Paul and the Early Christian Problem of Jewish Origins,” JR 86 (2006) 258–86, and Thomas F. Martin, “Vox Pauli: Augustine and the Claims to Speak for Paul, an Exploration of Rhetoric at the Service of Exegesis,” JECS 8 (2000) 237–72. Martin calls the fourth century “the century of Paul” (“Vox,” 241), noting especially a sharp uptick in commentaries on the Apostle’s letters. Paul of course is central to nearly every Christian writer of the period. Not only do his writings take up more than half of the New Testament, but stories and homilies about him also become widely popular among late antique Christians. His letters and vitae model Christian life and fill the early Christian imagination. For examples of this, see David G. Hunter, “The Reception and Interpretation of Paul in Late Antiquity: 1 Corinthians 7 and the Ascetic Debates,” in The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11–13 October 2006 (ed. Lorenzo DiTommaso and Lucian Turcescu; The Bible in Ancient Christianity 6; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 163–92; Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, “Late Antique Narrative Fiction: Apocryphal Acta and the Greek Novel in the Fifth-Century Life and Miracles of Thekla,” in Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006) 189–207; Stephen Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (OSEC; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Stephen Cooper and David Hunter, “Ambrosiaster redactor sui: The Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles (Excluding Romans),” REAug 56 (2010) 69–91; and Candida Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

For the underlying theoretical material, see Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy (trans. Alan Bass; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), originally delivered as a lecture in the Amphithéâtre Michelet, 27 January 1968, and published in Théorie d’ensemble (Paris: Seuil, 1968) 41–66; and idem, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (trans. Alan Bass; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). See also J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); Jacques Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,” in Margins of Philosophy, 307–30; Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); and Amy Hollywood, “Performativity, Citationality, Ritualization,” HR 42 (2002) 93–115.

4 Ruth Webb has helpfully complicated “mimesis” by arguing that there was an “unavoidable ambiguity, particularly about the role of mimesis in the formation of the ideal Christian subject, who was supposed to imitate Christ and the martyrs, and the relationship of outer appearance to inner reality” (Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008] 15). The problem here is that Christians might “feign” holiness. Feigned holiness, however, was far from the most important concern for Christian imitation. My argument is less about the sincerity of imitation than it is that imitation forges the types of relationships within which the “ideal Christian subject” is made. By paying attention to the relational nature of imitation we can better understand why Christians saw imitation as so crucial for projects of subject formation.

5 Robert A. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 2. For a broader discussion of the importance of relationality in religious studies, see Constance M. Furey, “Body, Society, and Subjectivity in Religious Studies,” JAAR 80 (2012) 7–33. Orsi’s most recent book, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), defines the study of religion as “the study of what human beings do to, for, and against the gods really present—using ‘gods’ as a synecdoche to all the special suprahuman beings with whom humans have been in relationship in different times and places—and what the gods really present do with, to, for, and against humans” (4). He argues the ways that relationships with “suprahuman beings” have been “agents of conformity” and have “flouted social norms” (5). This insistence on the ways gods are “present” while also holding a disciplinary function is important also to thinking about how Paul was “present” in the lives of early Christians, and yet also always mediated by practices of mimesis. See Orsi, History and Presence, 38–39, for his discussion of Jonathan Z. Smith’s classification of the study of religion debating “between an understanding of religion based on presence and one based on representation,” in “A Twice-Told Tale: The History of the History of Religions’ History,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 362–74, at 363.

6 See n. 2 above.

7 Moss, Other Christs, 4. Even more recently, see William Horst, “The Secret Plan of God and the Imitation of God: Neglected Dimension of Christian Differentiation in Ad Diognetum,” JECS 27 (2019) 161–83, at 176–83.

8 See Furey, “Body, Society, and Subjectivity.”

9 Constance Furey, Poetic Relations: Intimacy and Faith in the English Reformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 14.

10 Furey, Poetic Relations, 18.

11 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 2.

12 See Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Antiquity (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

13 See, e.g., Karen L. King, The Secret Revelation of John (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), esp. 191–214, which emphasizes the influence of Plato’s Timaeus.

14 See, e.g., Proclus, Proclus the Successor on Poetics and the Homeric Poems: Essays 5 and 6 of His Commentary on the Republic of Plato (trans. Robert Lamberton; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2012) 3, K42; and Jaś Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) 1–26.

15 Quintilian, Inst. 1.3.1 (Quintilian, The Orator’s Education [trans. Donald A. Russell; 5 vols.; LCL 124–27, 494; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001] 1:96–97). For modern studies, see Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (trans. George Lamb; New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), esp. 202; George A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition: From Ancient to Modern Times (2nd ed.; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), esp. 132–35; Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 1–130; Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); eadem, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity: A Translation of Choricius of Gaza’s Preliminary Talks and Declamations (ed. Robert J. Penella; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 1–32; see also Ekaterina V. Haskins, “ ‘Mimesis’ Between Poetics and Rhetoric: Performance Culture and Civic Education in Plato, Isocrates and Aristotle,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30 (2000) 7–33; and Arthur Urbano, The Philosophical Life: Biography and the Crafting of Intellectual Identity in Late Antiquity (Patristic Monograph Series 21; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), esp. 1–31.

16 See Cribiore, Gymnastics, 220–44.

17 Cicero, De or. 2.22 (Cicero, On the Orator: Books 1–2 [trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham; LCL 348; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942] 264–65).

18 Quintilian, Inst. 10.2.26 (LCL 127:334–35).

19 While rhetorical manuals stress the difference between rhetorical performance and acting, in practice it would have been hard to tell the difference.

20 Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 92–93.

21 See Choricius of Gaza, Or. 8, cited in Robert J. Penella, “Cross-dressing as a Declamatory Theme in Choricius of Gaza,” Hermes 141 (2013) 241–43.

22 Cribiore, School of Libanius, 139.

23 Libanius, Ep. 1261.2 (XI.339), cited in Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992) 7 n. 5.

24 See Cribiore, School of Libanius, 174–96.

25 This argument largely follows that of Michel Foucault, who also points to Christianity’s emphasis on obedience as an end in itself in “Technologies of the Self,” in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton; Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988) 16–49. For more within late antiquity, see Andrea Giardina, “The Transition to Late Antiquity,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (ed. Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, and Richard Saller; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 743–68, at 766. From Giardina’s work, we can see that mimetic relations required at once submitting to an archetype, while also forging an image from it. This understanding of artistic work and moral formation is especially clear in the monastic practices set forth in Basil’s Asketikon. See, e.g., Basil, The Longer Responses 5.3, 87–93, in Basil of Caesarea, The Asketikon of St. Basil the Great (trans. Anna M. Silvas; OESC; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 176–77. Giardina also cites part of this passage in “Transition,” 765.

26 For a different view, see Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Attaining Divine Perfection through Different Forms of Imitation,” Numen 60 (2013) 7–38. Petersen’s work seeks to find “an almost universal phenomenon in the history of religion” in which practitioners see imitation as a way to “overcome the ontological difference in order to attain a higher level of existence” (7).

27 This connection between imitation and desire goes at least as far back as Plato. See, e.g., Republic, books 2–3, 10; Symposium; and Phaedrus. See also Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 422–23, 459–67. Zuckert develops her reading in part in opposition to Jill Gordon’s Plato’s Erotic World: From Cosmic Origins to Human Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

28 Debates about the authorship of the Corpus Dionysiacum began after Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayr demonstrated that the author drew heavily on the fifth-century Neoplatonist Proclus. See Koch, “Proklus als Quelle des Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita in der Lehre vom Bösen,” Philologus 54 (1895) 438–54; idem, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita in seinen Beziehungen zum Neuplatonismus und Mysterienwesen (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1900); and Stiglmayr, “Der Neuplatoniker Proclus als Vorlage des sog. Dionysius Areopagita in der Lehre vom Übel,” Historisches Jahrbuch 16 (1895) 253–73, 721–48. For a more thorough review of the material and insight into the significance of the pseudonym, see Charles M. Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: “No Longer I” (OSEC; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

29 Charles M. Stang, “ ‘Being Neither Oneself Nor Someone Else’: The Apophatic Anthropology of Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality (ed. Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller; New York: Fordham University Press, 2010) 59–78, at 61. For more on the philosophical backdrop of this, see Eric Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007).

30 Stang, “Apophatic Anthropology,” 61.

31 Dionysius, Divine Names [hereafter cited as DN] 2.11, in The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite (trans. John Parker; 2 vols.; Merrick, NY: Richwood, 1897–99) 1:26. Citations follow the Greek in Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter, Corpus Dionysiacum I–II: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita (PTS 33, 36; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990–1991). While I referred to Parker’s translation, in what follows, translations of the Corpus Dionysiacum are mine. Readers may be familiar with the translation by Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (CWS; New York: Paulist, 1987), but my translations bring out a more technical vocabulary. I have also benefited from Andrew Radde-Gallwitz’s translation of Mystical Theology in The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, Volume 1: God (ed. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz; 2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) 1:341–46.

32 Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy [hereafter cited CH] 3.1: Ἔστι μὲν ἱεραρχία κατ’ ἐμὲ τάξις ἱερὰ καὶ ἐπιστήμη καὶ ἐνέργεια πρὸς τὸ θεοειδὲς ὡς ἐφικτὸν ἀφομοιουμένη καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἐνδιδομένας αὐτῇ θεόθεν ἐλλάμψεις ἀναλόγως ἐπὶ τὸ θεομίμητον ἀναγομένη.

33 Dionysius, CH 3.2: ἔστι γὰρ ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἱεραρχίᾳ κεκληρωμένων ἡ τελείωσις τὸ κατ’ οἰκείαν ἀναλογίαν ἐπὶ τὸ θεομίμητον ἀναχθῆναι καὶ τὸ δὴ πάντων θειότερον ὡς τὰ λόγιά φησι «Θεοῦ συνεργὸν» γενέσθαι καὶ δεῖξαι τὴν θείαν ἐνέργειαν ἐν ἑαυτῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀναφαινομένην.

34 Dionysius, DN 4.13.

35 Dionysius, DN 4.13.

36 Dionysius, DN 4.13: Ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἐκστατικὸς ὁ θεῖος ἔρως οὐκ ἐῶν ἑαυτῶν εἶναι τοὺς ἐραστάς, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἐρωμένων.

37 Dionysius, Mystical Theology 1.3; see Stang, “Apophatic Anthropology,” esp. 61. As in the rhetorical exercises mentioned above there is an ambiguity about whom one “becomes” in a mimetic relationship. There is another layer of unknowing, however, in becoming “neither oneself nor someone else”; namely, here, the object of imitation is also unknowable. One did not “become” Achilles by imitating Achilles, but Achilles did form a finite object of imitation. For Dionysius, participating in the light of Christ requires not knowing whom one imitates.

38 Dionysius, DN 4.13: Διὸ καὶ Παῦλος ὁ μέγας ἐν κατοχῇ τοῦ θείου γεγονὼς ἔρωτος καὶ τῆς ἐκστατικῆς αὐτοῦ δυνάμεως μετειληφὼς ἐνθέῳ στόματι·«Ζῶ ἐγώ», φησίν, «οὐκ ἔτι ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός».

39 Stang, “Apophatic Anthropology,” 68. Humans become ecstatic, like God, but that shared ecstasy also makes it all the clearer that God is different from humans. For comparisons with contemporary Neoplatonism, see Gregory Shaw, “Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite,” JECS 7 (1999) 573–99; Sara Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); more broadly, see Ancient Religions (ed. Sarah Iles Johnston; Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), esp. Johnston’s chapter, “Mysteries,” 100–101, and Stephen Halliwell, Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics From Homer to Longinus (1st ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

40 Stang, Apophasis, 153–206.

41 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 6.

42 Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 3, esp. 3.5–7.

43 John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 Cor. 11:1 1 (PG 51:301), cited in Margaret M. Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002) 1.

44 Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 68.

45 Jaclyn Maxwell has emphasized the give and take involved in Chrysostom’s preaching in her book, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), e.g., 170–72. His audience often disagreed with his program of Christian life. And while he had issues he cared about deeply, listeners “led him to concentrate upon what they wanted or needed to know” (117). He held influence with his congregation, but his sermons were only one of many forces competing for and interacting with their lives in shaping the ideals of Christian orthodoxy and virtue. His strategies of persuasion—especially because he appealed to audiences that ranged in educational levels (farmers, children, as well as rhetoric students)—often demanded that he present the scriptures in simple, vivid, memorable ways (88–117).

46 Because the Apostle imitates Christ, imitating Paul is always also imitating Christ.

47 Furey, Poetic Relations, 20.

48 See Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 4; Maxwell, Christianization, 88–117.

49 Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, xvi. On the importance of “the intensity of face-to-face loyalty” in Christian ascetic formation, see Peter Brown’s “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” Representations 1 (1983) 1–25, at 17.

50 John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Philippians [hereafter cited Hom. Phil. Sermon.section] (trans. Pauline Allen; WGRW 36; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2013) 4.35: Τί λέγεις, εἰπέ μοι;

51 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 7.2 (PG 61:56), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 48–49.

52 John Chrysostom, Kal 1 (PG 48:953), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 104.

53 Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009) 193.

54 Webb, Ekphrasis, 8.

55 For more on enargeia, see Webb, Ekphrasis, esp. 87–106, and chapter 3 of Byron MacDougall’s “Gregory of Nazianzus and Christian Festival Rhetoric” (PhD diss., Brown University, 2015).

56 Webb, Ekphrasis, 168.

57 Webb, Ekphrasis, 128. See also Liz James and Ruth Webb, “ ‘To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places’: Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium,” Art History 14 (1991) 1–17: “Ekphraseis were attempts to convey the truth residing in art. What we can reconstruct from ekphraseis is not the appearance of the work of art per se but rather how they were perceived within a society and what that society thought about its art and, more generally, about the functions and purposes of art. It is this unseen dimension that we should seek to explore more through the medium of ekphrasis” (14).

I do not take “fiction” here to mean simply “false.” For John, not unlike many fiction writers today, the character he presents for his audience is as real, if not more so, than the Paul in scripture. John’s work is to fill in the gaps so as to bring the character to life. He creates the character and the world into which his audience can join. For a helpful overview of ekphrasis, see Shadi Bartsch and Jaś Elsner, “Eight Ways of Looking at an Ekphrasis,” CP 102 (2007) i–vi; for the history of the study of ekphrasis, see Ruth Webb, “Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: The Invention of a Genre,” Word and Image 15 (1999) 7–18. Elsner emphasizes that it is not just “description” but evocative description in Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 24–26 (see more below).

58 Webb, Ekphrasis, 127–28, citing Elaine Scarry, Dreaming by the Book (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999) 6 [italics in original].

59 See John Chrysostom, Hom. Phil. 4.35.

60 See, e.g., John Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. 5:3 4 (PG 51:163), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 53 n. 91. Feeling Paul’s presence, these late antique Christians not only see but are seen; they come to see themselves as they are seen by the Apostle. See James A. Francis, “Living Icons: Tracing a Motif in Verbal and Visual Representation from the Second to Fourth Centuries C.E.,” AJP 124 (2003) 575–600, at 593. See also Robert S. Nelson, “To Say and to See: Ekphrasis and Vision in Byzantium,” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance (ed. Robert S. Nelson; Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 143–68, esp. 156. Furey, in her Poetic Relations, 50–51, draws on Orsi and comes to similar conclusions in her study on relationality among poetry writers in the English Reformation.

61 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 13.3 (PG 61:111–12), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 113–15.

62 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 13:3–4 (PG 61:110–12); Hom. Rom. 32.3 (PG 60:679–80), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 107–17, 124–30.

63 John Chrysostom, Hom. Phil. 5.40.

64 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 13.7 (PG 61:112), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 117.

65 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 13.7 (PG 61:112); Hom. Phil. 2.14–16.

66 John Chrysostom, Hom. Phil. 2.12.

67 John Chrysostom, Hom. Phil. 2.12.

68 Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 51.

69 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 13.3 (PG 61:110), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 105. John will invite his audience to encounter an “imperial portrait” or even a “gold portrait statue” of a moral exemplar in Paul, and his fixity and familiarity make him imitable. John’s deployment of artistic images opens readers not to a statue or a canvas, but to a body and soul. John’s Paul makes his own life into an “imperial portrait” (ἡ βασιλικὴ εἰκών), and John sees himself as continuing that work. See Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 54. For more on the imperial portrait and the function of imperial images more broadly, see Heavenly Trumpet, 55–64; Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, 159–89; Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (trans. Anthony Snodgrass and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Francis, “Living Icons”; Robin M. Jensen, Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005) 37–68; Paul Zanker, Roman Art (trans. Henry Heitmann-Gordon; Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), esp. 67–85; the essays in Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen, ed., The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), esp. Michael Peppard, “Was the Presence of Christ in Statues?” 225–70.

70 E.g., John Chrysostom, Hom. Is. 45:7 3 (PG 56:146), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 69.

71 John Chrysostom, Hom. Phil. 2.14.

72 John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 13.3 (PG 61:110), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 105; and Hom. Gen. 11.5 (PG 53:95), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 43.

73 John Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. 16:3 1.3 (PG 51:191), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 396.

74 John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God (trans. Paul W. Harkins; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982); see Hom. 8, 220–21 for an analysis of the same passage (2 Cor 12:2). Paul is “better than all men,” even occasionally “angelic,” but he does not stylize the divine incomparability the way Gregory’s Paul will.

75 This is not just a question of audience. While John’s homilies have “entertainment value” and are not delivered for an advanced audience, Gregory’s Homilies on the Song of Songs are also homilies delivered during lent before they are distributed to Olympias and beyond. A more capacious comparison could examine Gregory’s and Chrysostom’s understandings of divine accommodation. See, e.g., John’s On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, 3.15; and Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium II: An English Version with Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the 10th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Olomouc, September 15–18, 2004) (ed. Lenka Karfíková, Scot Douglass, and Johannes Zachhuber; trans. Stuart G. Hall; VCSup 82; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 2.144–45 [hereafter cited as CE]; Greek in Gregorii Nysseni Opera Online (ed. Ekkehard Mühlenberg and Giulio Maspero; 60 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1952–), https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/gregorii-nysseni-opera; see also CE 2.242, GNO 1.297.

76 Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 51. The Apostle “as mimetic intermediary,” Mitchell notes, “becomes increasingly important in the fourth century as christology soars higher and higher, and the imitation of Christ seems beyond the ken of ordinary human beings, whereas imitation of Paul stands more within reach.” As I will argue below, this might be an overgeneralization of the fourth century, even if I agree that it is a good summary of Chrysostom. See also Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), e.g., 113–16, 175–76, 248–57. John’s characteristically Antiochene interpretative practice forwards a rather literal reading of Paul. He wants to form a clear image of a human being in his audience’s mind, someone they can know and love as they would a friend, parent, or lover (all images Chrysostom invokes). This does not mean, however, that Paul is simply Paul. As Young has argued, Antiochene “literal” reading practices still assume a typology or understanding of scripture, what she calls an “iconic mimesis” (Biblical Exegesis, 200). See also Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, 9–10.

77 See James A. Francis, “Visual and Verbal Representation: Image, Text, Person, and Power,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity (ed. Philip Rousseau; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) 285–305, esp. 301. The tension between movement and stillness with the saints is a broad one, well expressed in Basil’s Letter 2, to Gregory of Nazianzus, in Letters (trans. Roy J. Deferrari; 4 vols.; LCL 190, 215, 243, 270; Harvard University Press, 1926) 1:6–25.

78 Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 64.

79 John not only reminds readers of what those hands did or what those eyes saw; he “wish[es] to see them,” Hom. Rom. 32.4 (PG 60:680), cited in Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, 129; on the connection between the rise of the holy man, the icon, and biography, see Francis, “Living Icons,” 591.

80 For a wider survey, see Miller, Corporeal Imagination, esp. 139–47. Georgia Frank, in her examination of eucharistic language in Chrysostom, shows that “the eyes of faith” are a set of “visual strategies” that encourage neophytes to see the sacred in the unfolding liturgy, but it is unclear to me if readers need those same eyes to see Paul. See Frank, “ ‘Taste and See’: The Eucharist and the Eyes of Faith in the Fourth Century,” CH 70 (2001) 619–43, at 621.

81 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 144.

82 Gregory of Nyssa, Homlies on the Song of Songs (trans. Richard A. Norris Jr.; WGRW 13; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2012) 12, 370 [hereafter cited as HSS homily number, page from GNO 24, included in Norris’s volume].

83 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 8, 245.

84 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 11, 321–22.

85 On reading desire, see Joan Copjec, Read my Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists (Radical Thinkers; New York: Verso, 2015), e.g., 14: “If it is desire rather than words that we are to take literally, this must mean that desire may register itself negatively in speech, that the relation between speech and desire, or social surface and desire, may be a negative one.”

86 See Michael Motia, “The Mimetic Life: Imitation and Infinity in Gregory of Nyssa” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2017), chapter 5.

87 On the rare occasions when Gregory discusses ekstasis, he quickly moves from ecstasy to notions of stretching. In HSS 10, 308–9, for example, Gregory quotes 2 Cor 5:13 and discusses how holy drunkenness brings about an ecstasy for a whole host of characters (David, Peter, Paul). But “ecstasy” in this case is not a radical break or a standing outside of oneself. Instead, the point is that each advances to new insights about God because of their ecstasy.

88 See, e.g., Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ (trans. H. C. Ogle and Henry Austin Wilson; NPNF 5; Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893) 523, GNO 39:238. It is also worth noting that mimesis is widely used to discuss baptism, which is done in imitation of Christ; see Jean Daniélou, Bible et liturgie: la théologie biblique des sacrements et des fêtes d’après les Pères de l’Eglise (Paris: Cerf, 1951) 65; and BDGN, s.v. baptism.

89 Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection, in Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works (trans. Virginia Woods Callahan; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967) 97.

90 Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection 122; GNO 30:214 (2 Cor 3:18, trans. altered).

91 Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection 96; GNO 30:174–75 (trans. altered).

92 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 6, 185–86.

93 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 6, 185–86.

94 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 6, 186.

95 The “many Pauls” parallels Gregory’s emphasis on the epinoiai of God that are both accurate and importantly different from the ousia of God. Gregory develops this view in contrast to Eunomius, who argues that all the names of God are reducible to the one true name, agennētos. For more, see Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (OECS; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp. 182–85.

96 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 3, 91: οὕτω καὶ Παῦλος, ἡ νύμφη, ὁ διὰ τῶν ἀρετῶν τὸν νυμφίον μιμούμενος καὶ ζωγραφῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ διὰ τοῦ εὐώδους τὸ ἀπρόσιτον κάλλος ἔκ τε τῶν καρπῶν τοῦ πνεύματος, ἀγάπης τε καὶ χαρᾶς καὶ εἰρήνης καὶ τῶν τοιούτων εἰδῶν, μυρεψῶν ταύτην τὴν νάρδον Χριστοῦ εὐωδίαν ἑαυτὸν ἔλεγεν εἶναι τὴν ἀπρόσιτον ἐκείνην καὶ ὑπερέχουσαν χάριν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ὀσφραινόμενος καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις παρέχων ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ τι θυμίαμα κατ’ ἐξουσίαν ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι.

97 Cf. John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 Cor. 5.2, 2.15 (PG 61:430).

98 Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Transformation of the Classical Heritage; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 32. Harvey also argues that the “spiritual senses” should be rethought not as an abandonment of bodily senses but as reliant and appreciative of the physical, especially that of smell.

99 Gregory of Nyssa, HSS 3, 87–88.

100 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Humanity (ed. J.-P. Migne; PG 44; Turnhout: Brepols Editores Pontificii), e.g., 11.2–4, 156, trans. mine: ἐπειδὴ ἓν τῶν περὶ τὴν θείαν φύσιν θεωρουμένων ἐστὶ τὸ ἀκατάληπτον τῆς οὐσίας· ἀνάγκη πᾶσα καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τὴν εἰκόνα πρὸς τὸ ἀρχέτυπον ἔχειν τὴν μίμησιν.

101 Gregory of Nyssa, CE 2.106. See also HSS 2, 63–64.

102 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 74; Furey, “Body, Society, and Subjectivity,” 23–25.

103 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 144.

104 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 2.

105 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 144.