Origen (c.185–c.253)

Abstract

AbstractBorn in Alexandria, Egypt, Origen may well have been the most influential Christian intellectual between St. Paul and Augustine. He received an outstanding education in Greek and Christian literature. His father, Leonidas, was executed as a Christian martyr in 202. Origen subsequently supported his remaining family by teaching grammar and literature. During this early period, Origen acquired expertise in classical philosophy and taught Christianity in a catechetical school in Alexandria. In addition to his teaching, he was a prodigious writer. One of his early works,De principiis(On First Principles) is nothing less than the first systematically articulated Christian hermeneutics analytically relating fundamental theological and philosophical commitments to a coherent reading of the whole Christian Bible. In this work, the basic contours of his intellectually daring spirituality are already present with its emphases on existential freedom, moral rigor, and a personally transformative spiritual reading of the Bible. Origen is without peer in shaping the Christian reading of Old Testament books. Finding profound wisdom in such ancient Jewish texts, Origen's thought would prove to be a steady, comprehensive, thoroughly intellectual rejection of both Gnostic and simplistic forms of Christianity.