RT Article
T1 History and Virtue: Contextualizing Exemplarity in Ambrose
JF Journal of early Christian studies
VO 25
IS 2
SP 201
OP 229
A1 Harmon, Andrew M.
LA English
PB Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
YR 2017
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1581907222
AB Ambrose's antithetical stance toward “philosophy” has been well documented, as has his emphasis on exemplarity for moral formation. The article recontextualizes Ambrose's antithetical writing against the philosophers by analyzing his recurrent claim of the remote antiquity of Christian exemplars. Because of their chronological and theoretical originality, these exemplars offer the oldest and truest ways to wisdom, thereby depicting non-Christian philosophy as derivative speculation. What emerges in Ambrose's writing is a picture of Christianity dictated by exemplarity and legitimated by recourse to history.
DO 10.1353/earl.2017.0019