On divine philantrhopy

In this meandric study the author has detected the semantic changes and enrichment of the notion of divine philanthropia from Aeschylus and Plato, through Philo the Jew and later pagan and Christian writers, down to Themistius of Byzantium and Chrysostom. In this thesis, presented to the Faculty of Harvard Divinity School in for the degree of Doctor of Theology in the subject of Church History, the author demonstrates how Chrysostom victoriously completed the “Kulturkampf ” that started with Justin, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, in which the Cappadocians, before Chrysostom, had best embodied the Church’s power to transform culture. Whatever pertains to God is mysterious and Chrysostom excelled in the effort to make us aware of that immense divine mystery in which he caught a glimpse of the concomitance of logically clashing attributes, as well as a supralogical consonance of opposites in one particular divine attribute like philanthropia.