David Satran's In the image of Origen examines the teacher-student relationship as depicted in the Thanksgiving address to Origen of Alexandria, composed by his student Gregory (most likely Gregory Thaumaturgus, but Satran withholds definitive judgement), situated within the context of late antique paideia. The important contribution of this book is its study of the compositional nature of the Address and what this tells about pedagogy in the pivotal third and fourth centuries. Against predominant readings of this text as either a stock piece of rhetoric in service of culturally conservative ends or as a mine for historical information about Origen, the ‘catechetical schools’, or the development of Christianity in Cappadocia, the author shows how the literary structure of Gregory's text illumines dimensions of the teacher-student relationship that are often acknowledged but rarely studied in detail. Satran situates his methodology against hyper-sceptical attitudes towards rhetorical texts, which are suspicious of any claim that their literary compositions conceal information of true value to the historian. Satran proposes instead to grapple seriously with its rhetoric, not as an obstacle but as a window to better understanding: ‘rhetoric neither conceals nor distorts but actually casts new light, enhancing certain features of an underlying reality’ (p. 11). In this case, within the rhetorical structure of Gregory's address lies an intimate portrait of the student-teacher relationship between Gregory and his teacher Origen.

The first four chapters track the flow of Gregory's Address, serving as a running commentary on the text, while a fifth chapter draws together the book's themes and casts light on larger issues in third- and fourth-century developments. Chapter i charts Gregory's initial ‘providential’ attraction to studying under Origen, which Satran characterises as a form of eros (understood in the philosophical context of late antique amicitia more than a psychologising Freudian analysis), and the liberating ‘constraint’ that this bond among un-equals forged upon Gregory. Chapter ii explores the curricular expression of this relationship, where Gregory learned to shed deficient intellectual habits and to cultivate instead what Pierre Hadot calls learning ‘to live dialectically’. Chapter iii considers the non-linear, open-ended pattern of moral and intellectual formation, wherein Gregory is compelled to become assimilated to Origen, who is himself, in Alexandria Christian-Platonist parlance, ‘assimilated to the divine’. All of this is propaedeutic to the ultimate aim of reading divine Scripture, though Gregory (according to Satran) is tantalisingly reticent as to Origen's actual exegetical practice. Chapter iv, ‘Paradise and the cave’, proposes that the final section of the Address (xvi.184–ix.207) could have functioned as a stand-alone unit with its genesis in an actual ‘leave-taking’ address delivered on the occasion of his departure from studying under Origen, which was then grafted onto the rest of text as an inclusio to recapitulate previous themes. Here Gregory odes his master through a carefully crafted biblical and Platonic portrait of exilic motifs – themes very familiar to Origen's theology.

Chapter v scales back to view how Gregory's Address illuminates the transformation of Christianity in the fourth century. He notes four points in particular: first, growing rifts between academic and ecclesiastical authority (he engages with Rowan Williams's argument that such tensions funded the controversy between Arius and Alexander); second, the development of spiritual guidance and hagiographical literature with its authoritative investiture of ascetic ‘holy men’; third, the emergence of a model of pedagogy – philosophical study as handmaiden to theology – that would define the Latin medieval and Byzantine cultures of education; and finally, the ongoing ambiguous relationship between freedom and constraint. Gregory's language of the intellectual liberation that emerged from his compulsory bond with Origen reveals a complexifying and deepening of debates surrounding freedom and necessity. In each case, Gregory's Address epitomises important developments in the transformation of classical antiquity – often earlier than recognised.

There is much to commend in Satran's work. Most notable is the needed attention to the composition of the Address, and not just its historical usefulness in reconstructing Origen's biography or the sketchy details surrounding the catechetical schools. In focusing on the text as a literary unit, Satran offers valuable insight into the Christian adaptation of classical paideia: namely, that what was most important was not the institutional features of the school – what we tend to think of today as ‘school’ – but rather the deeply personal nature of education and the central importance of the teacher-student bond. The absence of details in the Address about the institutional features of the schools is precisely what is illustrative of what Origen or Gregory would have considered most important. Furthermore, Satran's attention to the student-teacher bond has enabled him to highlight a key theological and moral aspect of education in the paradoxical relationship between freedom and constraint. What Satran is not afraid to call the ‘coercive’ nature of Origen's pedagogy is what enables the deconstruction of Gregory's intellectual and moral vices, and their replacement with truly liberating ones.

Though Satran's focus is on the composition of the Address, this does entail a comprehensive study of Gregory's text, which was not his purpose. One will not find extensive analyses of authorship, or stylistic or philological concerns, all of which can be found elsewhere. One aspect that might invite further treatment, and which would seem germane to Satran's stated purpose, is Gregory's logos theology vis-à-vis evolving paradigms of the mediatorial word. While he notes the importance of ‘assimilation to God’ in the Alexandrian tradition, Satran focuses on Gregory's assimilation to Origen more than his assimilation to God via Origen. But surely one's account of the object of assimilation would transform the nature of assimilation itself? Is Gregory's a participation in a mediating logos, the eternally generated Son, or something else? For Satran, logos seems to be primarily human logic or reason, which is only tangentially related to Christ as logos (pp. 36–9).

Aside from these minor concerns, Satran's book is laudable for its important contribution to studies of late antique education and rhetoric, to scholarship on Origen and Gregory and, one would like to hope, to contemporary discussions on the nature of education and the vital role of teachers as intellectual and moral guides to a truly liberating way of life.