Dr Sara Parvis  PhD

Dr Sara Parvis: Lecturer in Patristics (Ecclesiastical History)
S.Parvis@ed.ac.uk
+44 (0)131 650 8907

Introduction

• Lecturer in Patristics
• Assistant PG Director

Dr Sara Parvis was born in Aberdeen and grew up in Edinburgh. She was educated at Liberton High School, the University of Oxford (first St Hilda's, later Blackfriars), and the University of Edinburgh. She held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Edinburgh from October 2002 until September 2005, and is now Lecturer in Patristics.

She is the author of Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy 325-345, a study of the often neglected period between Nicaea and the emergence of the theological stars of the later half of the Controversy.

Her other research interests within the Patristic period include the development of orthodoxy and the construction of heresy, sources of authority in the Church, the place of scriptural exegesis in Patristic thought, and the search for some of the hidden voices of early Christianity, both doctrinal and sociological. She has also worked on early Christian models of the family as resources for a more nuanced modern theology of the family. She is currently completing an edition of Marcellus of Ancyra's extant works.

Dr Sara Parvis welcomes applications/inquiries from research students in the following areas: the Arian controversy; orthodoxy and heresy; the Chalcedonian controversies; Patristic exegesis; all aspects of second-century Christianity; martyrdom; Asia Minor Christianity; Montanism; monasticism; the family in early Christianity; gender and sexuality in early Christianity; preaching and pastoral theology and practice in the early church; most other topics in Patristics and early church history.

Research Areas

General (Teaching) Competence

Books in preparation

• The Extant Works of Marcellus of Ancyra: the Canons of Ancyra 314, the Contra Asterium, De Sancta Ecclesia, the Letter to Julius and the Western Creed of Serdica


• Nicaea: Sources and Documents (with Dr Paul Parvis)

Selected Publications

• 'Perpetua', Expository Times 120 (2009), pp. 365-372
  
  
• ' "Ta tinon ara remata theologei?": The exegetical relationship between Athanasius' Orationes Contra Arianos I-III and Marcellus of Ancyra's Contra Asterium', in Lorenzo DiTommaso and Lucian Turcescu, eds, The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 337-367
  
  
• Justin Martyr and his Worlds, eds Sara Parvis and Paul Foster (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007)
  
  
• 'The Martyrdom of Polycarp', in Paul Foster, ed., The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers (T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 126-146
  
  
• 'Justin Martyr and the Apologetic Tradition' in Parvis and Foster, Justin Martyr and his Worlds, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), pp. 115-127
  
  
• 'Christology in the Early Arian Controversy: the Exegetical War', in Andrew T. Lincoln and Angus Paddison, eds, Christology and Scripture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 120-137
  
  
• Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy 325-345, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford University Press, 2006)
  
  
• 'The Strange Disappearance of the Moderate Origenists: The Arian Controversy, 326-341', Studia Patristica 39 (2006), pp. 97-102
  
  
• 'The Canons of Ancyra and Caesarea (314): Lebon's thesis revisited', Journal of Theological Studies ns 52 (2001), pp. 325-336
  
  
• 'Marcellus or Vitalis: who presided at Ancyra 314?', Studia Patristica 34 (2001), pp. 197-203