[aces]

wait for it.....now what made the church throw it out, possibly a condemnation of society? Hmmmmmmm..

[livius]

Interesting. Origen was a little extreme (he was the one who castrated himself in a very literal reading of the passage in Matthew about being a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven) but his thought was in general very sound. One of the problems was that Origen did not take a lot of care about his followers, and people often either misinterpreted or even tampered with the actual texts of his homilies.

He was a brilliant theologian, famed for his work against the heresies circulating at that time and also for his ascetical practice and holiness of life. But perhaps he was a little too removed from the real world of dispute and deceit.

[the_Watchman]

Origen was one of the first to employ widespread allegorical interpretation. He even proposed that texts many times had meanings on multiple levels.

Before one elevates the early Church fathers to a pedestal one only has to note that Paul and Peter were fighting heresy and poor interpretation techniques from the first century. The earliest Church leaders usually did not even have the full canon at their disposal since it doesn’t seem to have been compiled and adopted until around 250 AD at the earliest.

[El Cid]

Origen? Not meaning to be mean, but I'd be leery about taking theological advice from someone who cut off his own nards...
I know he was a prolific writer, and probably some of his stuff was pretty good. But I also understood that he tended to turn everything in Scripture into a metaphor, and consequently he promoted some strange ideas that had no Scriptural basis (like cutting one's nards off ... which he did latter admit was a bad idea... ).

[BenLurkin]

ping

[Defiant]

Are they Origenals?