St. Gregory Thaumaturgus’ Address of Thanksgiving to Origen: A Model of Philosophical and Spiritual Paideia from the Early Church

Abstract

In this paper, I present the Address of Thanksgiving to Origen by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, a third-century pupil of Origen’s at the school in Caesarea. I hope to show how Gregory’s description of his philosophical education under Origen represents an enterprise initiated and guided by a holistic love for the human being in all his dimensions: a quintessential example of Christian paideia expressed through a human teacher under the direction of a loving and paternal God. Gregory describes his philosophical education as a transformative process that awakens him to the truth, trains his reasoning capacity, and imparts to him a genuine love of God. Conducting a close reading of the text, I describe and attempt to integrate the various components of this paideia into a model for study.