7 March 1984

Abstract

THIS WEEK I HAVE received a letter from an auditor concerning parrhēsia and the different and new meanings of the word in Christian literature. She has sent me some very interesting references in Cassian, John Climachus, the Sayings, the Church Fathers, etcetera. Then, self-effacement: she does not put her name or address. So I cannot reply. Anyway, I say to her that she is in fact quite right. Her references are interesting, that is precisely the direction I would like to take this year, if I have time: to show you how, through the evolution of the term parrhēsia in Greco-Roman Antiquity, we arrive with Christianity at a sort of breaking up of the meanings of the word parrhēsia in Christian literature. Certainly, when Gregory of Nazianzus praises Maximus, presenting him as a Cynic endowed with parrhēsia, the word is employed with its completely traditional meaning.¹ But a whole set of other meanings will be brought to the word parrhēsia. This is what I would like to study a bit later. That is the brief answer to this letter, simply in the form of a promise, which I am not even sure I will be able to keep.