Talk:Origen

Origen regarded as a "Heresiarch"?

@50.204.245.34: You recently added this passage to the last paragraph of the lead, along with a great deal of other information which was both uncited and unsupported by the information given in the body of the article:

Origen is considered to be a Heresiarch by adherents of the Ecumenical Councils due to his condemnation by five of these bodies according to the Roman Catholic reckoning and three according the the Eastern Orthodox enumeration.

I reverted this edit and you reverted my edit, suggesting Norman P. Tanner's Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I to Lateran V to me in your edit summary, which you implied supports these claims you added to the article about Origen being a "Heresiarch." I do not, however, have access to that book and it is not available online, so I have no means of confirming whether it really says what you claim it says about Origen being regarded as a "Heresiarch." I will agree that, certainly, some people in ancient times regarded him as a Heresiarch and there are probably some people who still regard him as one today. Nonetheless, the statement that "Origen is considered to be a Heresiarch by adherents of the Ecumenical Councils" is clearly no longer true, if it was ever.

Even if Origen was condemned by subsequent councils after the Second Council of Constantinople (whose famous alleged condemnation of Origen, as I mention, is debated) and all the books on him somehow failed to mention this (or I somehow missed all the places where they do mention it, which is admittedly possible), it is still not accurate to say that he is "considered to be a Heresiarch by adherents of the Ecumenical Councils." I have yet to find a single scholarly source written in the modern era that calls him a "Heresiarch." Indeed, all the scholarly sources I have found written by orthodox Christian writers, both Protestant and Catholic, are favorable towards Origen, stating that later attacks on Origen's orthodoxy were either condemnations of what people influenced by Origen had claimed rather than what Origen himself had actually taught, or anachronistic judgments imposing the standards of orthodoxy of later eras onto Origen, who lived centuries prior in a very different theological environment, in which speculation was more widely tolerated.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that none other than Pope Benedict XVI included a sermon on Origen entitled "Origen of Alexandria: Life and Work" as part of his series of sermons Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine delivered in 2007 in which he praises Origen as "a figure crucial to the whole development of Christian thought," "a true 'maestro,'" and "not only a brilliant theologian but also an exemplary witness of the doctrine he passed on." He concludes the sermon by urging his audience, "welcome into your hearts the teaching of this great master of the faith." I take this to mean that the Pope Emeritus himself is anathema, then? Perhaps we could say that some people regard him as a heretic, but we can certainly not say that all "adherents of the Ecumenical Councils" regard him as such. Furthermore, even if all the information you added turns out to be accurate and supported by reliable, scholarly sources, it is way too much information on the subject for the lead, which is already quite long as it is. –Katolophyromai (talk) 23:01, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Katolophyromai:, I reply to this topic given that it is indirectly related to my previous one. I think it there exists the Papal primacy as well as a Fidei depositum needing to be preserved. If the theories of Origen were critically reviewed in recent times in order to make him a Church Father, he isn't still claimed as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church nor it seems to be started its canonization process for sainthood. This element still may have its weight on a global evaluation of the article.

About the dominant opinion for which he wasn't an Heresiarch, many people may ask themselves where it comes from. It may be useeful to remember that untill 1873 Freemasonry and Roman Catholic Church were believed to be in conflict (and enemies). Finally, the St Michael's exorcism has a meaningful prophecy relating to the "most crafty enemies" of Jesus Christ God and his Church. But it doesn't give an exact timeline to its believers in order to identify its historical actuation. Spiritism, even if true, it is only one of the many existing points of view--Micheledisaveriosp (talk)

Pronunciation

It's fairly standard to give a phonetic "spelling" of the names of people on their page. For example, /juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek: Εὐσέβιος Eusebios. And these are contemporary pronunciations, not the way their peers knew them.

I never know whether to say 'rig' as in 'ridge' or as in plain 'rig', as in origin or Oregon.

I hate "Joe-see-fss" . . . but that's what everyone seems to call him, at least in the English-speaking world. What do Israeli and, say, Romance-language scholars call him, I wonder? Nick Barnett (talk) 15:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Problem with an "Contra Hieronymum?"

The following passage from the "Views" section, under "Cosmology and Eschatology," contains what strongly seems to me an unsubstantiated claim:

"Jerome quotes Origen as having allegedly written that "after aeons and the one restoration of all things, the state of Gabriel will be the same as that of the Devil, Paul's as that of Caiaphas, that of virgins as that of prostitutes." Jerome, however, was not above deliberately altering quotations to make Origen seem more like a heretic, and Origen expressly states in his Letter to Friends in Alexandria that Satan and "those who are cast out of the kingdom of God" would be not included in the final salvation."

The source that is expressly listed for the second sentence, which is the one I take issue with, can be found here.

St. Jerome actually speaks about translation (and refutes accusations of mistranslation against him in another case) here. I really do not think we should be giving much credence to Dr. Chadwick (an evangelical Anglican, according to Wikipedia -- Origen is canonized in the Anglican communion) in regard to Jerome's moral aptitude. I think St. Jerome himself would answer more accurately in that regard: his letter indicates that any mistranslations are not willful and his translations, per classical norms, sought to render sense for sense. Ornithopolis (talk) 03:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Another possibility is that as Jerome lost confidence in Origen, he moved from reading Origen with a "hermeneutic of generosity" to using a "hermeneutic of suspicion." This response is natural, perhaps prudent even, but it has caused a lot of trouble in the church throughout the years as people with some suspect beliefs were accused of holding other beliefs they did not actually hold. The editorial implication is that editors need to be aware that when discussing what Origen actually believed there is a good chance that some (especially non-academic and older) material may be less good as WP:RS than desired; similar issue with Tertullian. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 09:53, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

He wrote in Latin? What about Greek?

This article acts like there is no difference between Greek and Latin in his writings. Why can't it say at the beginning or somewhere that all his works were in Greek? There is no way to tell from the article if he knew Latin or not. There's a world of difference between Greek and Latin, it seems like specifically mentioning the languages he knew and used would be significant in such an informative article. Jimhoward72 (talk) 08:52, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

ÖHL

I have been trying to remove ÖHL links but a bot keeps putting it back in. Anyone know how to solve this problem? -- Melchior2006 (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Melchior2006! Looking at the recent edits to this page, it looks like the reference was used multiple times; the first time the reference was given in full, and the second time, it used the "ref name" function. You deleted the first reference but not the second. One of that bot's functions is to find places where a ref name is referring to a deleted full reference and add the full reference to the short reference, under the assumption that the full reference was deleted by someone who didn't realize that the same reference was referred to in another place in the article. To avoid this, if the source has a "name" field in it, you need to check to see if that ref name is referred to elsewhere in the article and delete those as well. Smdjcl (talk) 19:23, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for your help! -- Melchior2006 (talk) 23:20, 21 November 2024 (UTC)